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I 


AS  WE  GO 


BY 


CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW    YORK 

HARPER    AND    BROTHERS 

MDCCCXCIV 


h ' 


1^- 


Copyright,  1893,  by  Harper  &  Brothers. 

All  rights  rescn'cd. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

OUR  PRESIDENT .  3 

THE  NEWSPAPER-MADE   MAN lO 

INTERESTING  GIRLS 16 

GIVE   THE    MEN    A  CHANCE 22 

THE   ADVENT  OF  CANDOR 28 

THE   AMERICAN   MAN 36 

THE  ELECTRIC  WAY 41 

CAN   A  HUSBAND  OPEN    HIS  WIFE'S   LETTERS?    .  49 

A  LEISURE  CLASS 54 

WEALTH   AND   CHARACTER 62 

BORN  WITH   AN   "EGO" 67 

JUVENTUS   MUNDI 73 

A  BEAUTIFUL    OLD  AGE 79 

THE  ATTRACTION    OF   THE   REPULSIVE      ....  85 

GIVING  AS   A  LUXURY 92 

CLIMATE  AND   HAPPINESS 99 

THE  NEW  FEMININE   RESERVE 109 

REPOSE  IN   ACTIVITY 117 

WOMEN— IDEAL  AND   REAI 126 

THE  ART   OF   IDLENESS 132 

IS  THERE  ANY   CONVERSATION? 140 

THE   TALL  GIRI 146 

THE   DEADLY   DIARY 154 

THE  WHISTLING   GIRL 160 

BORN  OLD   AND   RICH 168 

THE   "OLD   SOLDIER  " 177 

THE   ISLAND  OF   BIMINI 1S4 

JUNE 193 


BY   THE   WAY 


"^^^ 


ou 


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PRESIDENT 


arc  so  much  accustomed  to  kings  and 
'queens  and  other  privileged  persons  of 
that  sort  in  this  world  that  it  is  only  on 
reflection  that  we  wonder  how  they  be- 
came so.  The  mystery  is  not  their  con- 
tinuance, but  how  did  they  get  a  start  ? 
We  take  little  help  from  studying  the 
bees — originally  no  one  could  have  been 
born  a  queen.  There  must  have  been 
not  only  a  selection,  but  an  election,  not 
by  ballot,  but  by  consent  some  way  ex- 
pressed, and  the  privileged  persons  got 
their  positions  because  they  were  the 
strongest,  or  the  wisest,  or  the  most  cun- 
ning. But  the  descendants  of  these  privi- 
leged persons  hold  the  same  positions 
when  they  are  neither  strong,  nor  wise. 


nor  very  cunning.  This  also  is  a  mystery. 
The  persistence  of  privilege  is  an  un- 
explained thing  in  human  affairs,  and  the 
consent  of  mankind  to  be  led  in  govern- 
ment and  in  fashion  by  those  to  whom 
none  of  the  original  conditions  of  leader- 
ship attach  is  a  philosophical  anomaly. 
How  many  of  the  living  occupants  of 
thrones,  dukedoms,  earldoms,  and  such 
high  places  are  in  position  on  their  own 
merits,  or  would  be  put  there  by  com- 
mon consent.''  Referring  their  origin  to 
some  sort  of  an  election,  their  contin- 
uance seems  to  rest  simply  on  forbear- 
ance. Here  in  America  we  are  trying  a 
new  experiment ;  we  have  adopted  the 
principle  of  election,  but  we  have  supple- 
mented it  with  the  equally  authoritative 
right  of  deposition.  And  it  is  interest- 
ing to  see  how  it  has  worked  for  a  hun- 
dred years,  for  it  is  human  nature  to  like 
to  be  set  up,  but  not  to  like  to  be  set 
down.  If  in  our  elections  we  do  not 
always  get  the  best  —  perhaps  few  elec- 
tions ever  did —  we  at  least  do  not  per- 
petuate forever  in  privilege  our  mistakes 
or  our  good  hits. 


The  celebration  in  New  York,  in  1889, 
of  the  inauguration  of  Washington  was  an 
instructive  spectacle.  How  much  of  privi- 
lege had  been  gathered  and  perpetu- 
ated in  a  century  ?  Was  it  not  an  occa- 
sion that  emphasized  our  republican  de- 
mocracy ?  Two  things  were  conspicuous. 
One  was  that  we  did  not  honor  a  family, 
or  a  dynasty,  or  a  title,  but  a  character ; 
and  the  other  was  that  we  did  not  exalt 
any  living  man,  but  simply  the  office  of 
President.  It  was  a  demonstration  of 
the  power  of  the  people  to  create  their 
own  royalty,  and  then  to  put  it  aside  when 
they  have  done  with  it.  It  was  difficult 
to  see  how  greater  honors  could  have 
been  paid  to  any  man  than  were  given  to 
the  President  when  he  embarked  at  Eliza- 
bethport  and  advanced,  through  a  harbor 
crowded  with  decorated  vessels,  to  the 
great  city,  the  wharves  and  roofs  of  which 
were  black  with  human  beings — a  holi- 
day city  which  shook  with  the  tumult  of 
the  popular  welcome.  Wherever  he  went 
he  drew  the  swarms  in  the  streets  as  the 
moon  draws  the  tide.  Republican  sim- 
plicity   need    not    fear  comparison  with 


any  royal  pageant  when  the  President 
was  received  at  the  Metropolitan,  and,  in 
a  scene  of  beauty  and  opulence  that 
might  be  the  flowering  of  a  thousand 
years  instead  of  a  century,  stood  upon  the 
steps  of  the  "  dais  "  to  greet  the  devoted 
Centennial  Quadrille,  which  passed  before 
him  with  the  courageous  Ave,  Imperator, 
tnorituri  ie  sahitamus.  We  had  done 
it  —  we,  the  people  ;  that  was  our  royalty. 
Nobody  had  imposed  it  on  us.  It  was 
not  even  selected  out  of  four  hun- 
dred. We  had  taken  one  of  the  common 
people  and  set  him  up  there,  creating 
for  the  moment  also  a  sort  of  royal  fami- 
ly and  a  court  for  a  background,  in  a 
splendor  just  as  imposing  for  the  passing 
hour  as  an  imperial  spectacle.  We  like 
to  show  that  we  can  do  it,  and  we  like  to 
show  also  that  we  can  undo  it.  For  at 
the  banquet,  where  the  Elected  ate  his 
dinner,  not  only  in  the  presence  of,  but 
with,  representatives  of  all  the  people  of 
all  the  States,  looked  down  on  by  the  ac- 
knowledged higher  power  in  American 
life,  there  sat  also  with  him  two  men 
who  had  lately  been  in  his  great  position, 


the  centre  only  a  little  while  ago,  as  he 
was  at  the  moment,  of  every  eye  in  the 
republic,  now  only  common  citizens  with- 
out a  title,  without  any  insignia  of  rank, 
able  to  transmit  to  posterity  no  family 
privilege.  If  our  hearts  swelled  with 
pride  that  we  could  create  something 
iust  as  good  as  royalty,  that  the  republic 
had  as  many  men  of  distinguished  ap- 
pearance, as  much  beauty,  and  as  much 
brilliance  of  display  as  any  traditional 
government,  we  also  felicitated  ourselves 
that  we  could  sweep  it  all  away  by  a  vote 
and  reproduce  it  with  new  actors  next 
day. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  it  was  a  peo- 
ple's afTair.  If  at  any  time  there  was  any 
idea  that  it  could  be  controlled  only  by 
those  who  represented  names  honored 
for  a  hundred  years,  or  conspicuous  by 
any  social  privilege,  the  idea  was  swamped 
in  popular  feeling.  The  names  that  had 
been  elected  a  hundred  years  ago  did  not 
stay  elected  unless  the  present  owners 
were  able  to  distinguish  themselves. 
There  is  nothing  so  to  be  coveted  in  a 
country  as  the  perpetuity  of  honorable 


names,  and  the  "centennial"  showed 
that  we  are  rich  in  those  that  have  been 
honorably  borne,  but  it  also  showed  that 
the  century  has  gathered  no  privilege 
that  can  count  upon  permanence. 

But  there  is  another  aspect  of  the 
situation  that  is  quite  as  serious  and 
satisfactory.  Now  that  the  ladies  of  the 
present  are  coming  to  dress  as  ladies 
dressed  a  hundred  years  ago,  we  can 
make  an  adequate  comparison  of  beauty. 
Heaven  forbid  that  we  should  disparage 
the  women  of  the  Revolutionary  period  ! 
They  looked  as  well  as  they  could  under 
all  the  circumstances  of  a  new  country 
and  the  hardships  of  an  early  settlement. 
Some  of  them  looked  exceedingly  well — 
there  were  beauties  in  those  days  as  there 
were  giants  in  Old  Testament  times. 
The  portraits  that  have  come  down  to  us 
of  some  of  them  excite  our  admiration, 
and  indeed  we  have  a  sort  of  tradition  of 
the  loveliness  of  the  women  of  that  re- 
mote period.  The  gallant  men  of  the 
time  exalted  them.  Yet  it  must  be  ad- 
mitted by  any  one  who  witnessed  the 
public   and    private  gatherings  of  April 


1889,  in  New  York,  contributed  to  as  they 
were  by  women  from  every  State,  and 
who  is  unprejudiced  by  family  associa- 
tions, that  the  women  of  America  seem 
vastly  improved  in  personal  appearance 
since  the  days  when  George  Washington 
was  a  lover  :  that  is  to  say,  the  number  of 
beautiful  women  is  greater  in  proportion 
to  the  population,  and  their  beauty  and 
charm  are  not  inferior  to  those  which 
have  been  so  much  extolled  in  the  Revo- 
lutionary time.  There  is  no  doubt  that 
if  George  Washington  could  have  been 
at  the  Metropolitan  ball  he  would  have 
acknowledged  this,  and  that  while  he 
might  have  had  misgivings  about  some 
of  our  political  methods,  he  would  have 
been  more  proud  than  ever  to  be  still  ac- 
knowledged the  Father  of  his  Country. 


^ 


f  THE 

NEWSPAPER-MADE   MAN 

,^  FAIR  correspondent  —  has 
't'^-'f  the  phrase  an  old-time  sound  ? 
— thinks  we  should  pay  more 
attention  to  men.  In  a  revolu- 
tionary time,  when  great  ques- 
tions are  in  issue, minor  matters, which  may 
nevertheless  be  very  important,  are  apt  to 
escape  the  consideration  they  deserve.  We 
share  our  correspondent's  interest  in  men, 
but  must  plead  the  pressure  of  circum- 
stances. When  there  are  so  many  Wom- 
an's Journals  devoted  to  the  wants  and 
aspirations  of  women  alone,  it  is  perhaps 
time  to  think  of  having  a  Man's  Journal, 
which  should  try  to  keep  his  head  above- 
water  in  the  struggle  for  social  supremacy. 
When  almost  every  number  of  the  leading 
periodicals  has  a  paper  about  Woman  — ■ 
written  probably  by  a  woman  —  Woman 
To-day,  Woman  Yesterday,  Woman  To- 
morrow;  when  the  inquiry  is  daily  made 


in  the  press  as  to  what  is  expected  of 
woman,  and  the  new  requirements  laid 
upon  her  by  reason  of  her  opportunities, 
her  entrance  into  various  occupations,  her 
education— the  impartial  observer  is  likely 
to  be  confused,  if  he  is  not  swept  away  by 
the  rising  tide  of  femininity  in  modern  life. 

But  this  very  superiority  of  interest  in 
the  future  of  women  is  a  warning  to  man 
to  look  about  him,  and  see  where  in  this 
tide  he  is  going  to  land,  if  he  will  float  or 
go  ashore,  and  what  will  be  his  character 
and  his  position  in  the  new  social  order. 
It  will  not  do  for  him  to  sit  on  the  stump 
of  one  of  his  prerogatives  that  woman  has 
felled, and  say  with  Brahma, "They  reck- 
on ill  who  leave  me  out,"  for  in  the  day 
of  the  Subjection  of  Man  it  may  be  little 
consolation  that  he  is  left  in. 

It  must  be  confessed  that  man  has  had 
a  long  inning.  Perhaps  it  is  true  that  he 
owed  this  to  his  physical  strength,  and 
that  he  will  only  keep  it  hereafter  by  in- 
tellectual superiority,  by  the  dominance 
of  mind.  And  how  in  this  generation  is 
he  equipping  himself  for  the  future  ?  He 
is  a  money-making  animal.     That  is  be- 


yond  dispute.  Never  before  were  there 
such  business  men  as  this  generation  can 
show — Napoleons  of  finance,  Alexanders 
of  adventure,  Shakespeares  of  specula- 
tion, Porsons  of  accumulation.  He  is 
great  in  his  field,  but  is  he  leaving  the 
intellectual  province  to  woman  ?  Does 
he  read  as  much  as  she  does }  Is  he 
becoming  anything  but  a  newspaper- 
made  person  ?  Is  his  mind  getting  to 
be  like  the  newspaper  ?  Speaking  gener- 
ally of  the  mass  of  business  men  —  and 
the  mass  are  business  men  in  this  country 
— have  they  any  habit  of  reading  books.'' 
They  have  clubs,  to  be  sure,  but  of  what 
sort.?  With  the  exception  of  a  conversa- 
tion club  here  and  there,  and  a  literary 
club,  more  or  less  perfunctory,  are  they 
not  mostly  social  clubs  for  comfort  and 
idle  lounging,  many  of  them  known,  as  oth- 
er workmen  are,  by  their  "  chips  ?"  What 
sort  of  a  book  would  a  member  make 
out  of  "  Chips  from  my  Workshop  ?" 
Do  the  young  men,  to  any  extent,  join 
in  Browning  clubs  and  Shakespeare  clubs 
and  Dante  clubs  ?  Do  they  meet  for 
the  study  of  history,  of  authors,  of  lit- 


erary  periods,  for  reading,  and  discussing 
what  they  read  ?  Do  they  in  concert 
dig  in  the  encyclopaedias,  and  write  pa- 
pers about  the  correlation  of  forces,  and 
about  Savonarola,  and  about  the  Three 
Kings?  In  fact,  what  sort  of  a  hand 
would  the  Three  Kings  suggest  to  them  ? 
In  the  large  cities  the  women's  clubs,  pur- 
suing literature,  art,  languages,  botany, 
history,  geography,  geology,  mythology, 
are  innumerable.  And  there  is  hardly  a 
village  in  the  land  that  has  not  from  one 
to  six  clubs  of  young  girls  who  meet  once 
a  week  for  some  intellectual  purpose. 
What  are  the  young  men  of  the  villages 
and  the  cities  doing  meantime  ?  How 
are  they  preparing  to  meet  socially  these 
young  ladies  who  are  cultivating  their 
minds  ?  Are  they  adapting  themselves 
to  the  new  conditions  ?  Or  are  they 
counting,  as  they  always  have  done,  on 
the  adaptability  of  women,  on  the  facil- 
ity with  which  the  members  of  the  bright 
sex  can  interest  themselves  in  base-ball 
and  the  speed  of  horses  and  the  chances 
of  the  "  street  ?"  Is  it  comfortable  for 
the  young  man,  when  the  talk  is  about  the 


last  notable  book,  or  the  philosophy  of  the 
popular  poet  or  novelist,  to  feel  that  laugh- 
ing eyes  are  sounding  his  ignorance  ? 

Man  is  a  noble  creation,  and  he  has  fine 
and  sturdy  qualities  which  command  the 
admiration  of  the  other  sex  ,  but  how  will 
it  be  when  that  sex,  by  reason  of  superior 
acquirements,  is  able  to  look  down  on  him 
intellectually  ?  It  used  to  be  said  that 
women  are  what  men  wish  to  have  them, 
that  they  endeavored  to  be  the  kind  of 
women  who  would  win  masculine  admi- 
ration. How  will  it  be  if  women  have 
determined  to  make  themselves  what  it 
pleases  them  to  be,  and  to  cultivate  their 
powers  in  the  expectation  of  pleasing  men, 
if  they  indulge  any  such  expectation,  by 
their  higher  qualities  only?  This  is  not 
a  fanciful  possibility.  It  is  one  that  young 
men  will  do  well  to  ponder.  It  is  easy  to 
ridicule  the  literary  and  economic  and  his- 
torical societies,  and  the  naive  courage 
with  which  young  women  in  them  attack 
the  gravest  problems,  and  to  say  that  they 
are  only  a  passing  fashion,  like  decorative 
art  and  a  mode  of  dress.  But  a  fashion 
is  not  to  be  underestimated  ;  and  when  a 


fashion  continues  and  spreads  like  this 
one,  it  is  significant  of  a  great  change 
going  on  in  society.  And  it  is  to  be  no- 
ticed that  this  fashion  is  accompanied  by 
other  phenomena  as  interesting.  There  is 
scarcely  an  occupation,  once  confined  al- 
most exclusively  to  men,  in  which  women 
are  not  now  conspicuous.  Never  before 
were  there  so  many  women  who  are  su- 
perior musicians,  performers  themselves 
and  organizers  of  musical  societies;  nev- 
er before  so  many  women  who  can  draw 
well ;  never  so  many  who  are  successful 
in  literature,  who  write  stories,  translate, 
compile,  and  are  acceptable  workers  in 
magazines  and  in  publishing  houses  ;  and 
never  before  were  so  many  women  read- 
ing good  books,  and  thinking  about  them, 
and  talking  about  them,  and  trying  to  ap- 
ply the  lessons  in  them  to  the  problems  of 
their  own  lives,  which  are  seen  not  to  end 
with  marriage.  A  great  deal  of  this  activ- 
ity, crude  much  of  it,  is  on  the  intellectual 
side,  and  must  tell  strongly  by-and-by  in 
the  position  of  women.  And  the  young 
men  will  take  notice  that  it  is  the  intel- 
lectual force  that  must  dominate  in  life. 


INTERESTING   GIRLS 


JJT  seems  hardly  worth 
while  to  say  that  this 
would  be  a  more  inter- 
esting country  if  there 
were  more  interesting 
people  in  it.  But  the 
remark  is  worth  con- 
sideration in  a  land 
where  things  are  so  much  estimated  by 
what  they  cost.  It  is  a  very  expensive 
country,  especially  so  in  the  matter  of  edu- 
cation, and  one  cannot  but  reflect  whether 
the  result  is  in  proportion  to  the  outlay. 
It  costs  a  great  many  thousands  of  dollars 
and  over  four  years  of  time  to  produce  a 
really  good  base-ball  player,  and  the 
time  and  money  invested  in  the  produc- 
tion of  a  society  young  woman  are  not 
less.  No  complaint  is  made  of  the  cost  of 
these  schools  of  the  higher  education  ;  the 
point  is  whether  they  produce  interesting 


people.  Of  course  all  women  are  inter- 
esting. It  has  got  pretty  well  noised 
about  the  world  that  American  women 
are,  on  the  whole,  more  interesting  than 
any  others.  This  statement  is  not  made 
boastfully,  but  simply  as  a  market  quota- 
tion, as  one  might  say.  They  are  sought 
for  ;  they  rule  high.  They  have  a  "  way  ;" 
they  know  how  to  be  fascinating,  to  be 
agreeable  ;  they  unite  freedom  of  man- 
ner with  modesty  of  behavior ;  they  are 
apt  to  have  beauty,  and  if  they  have  not, 
they  know  how  to  make  others  think 
they  have.  Probably  the  Greek  girls  in 
their  highest  development  under  Pheidi- 
as  were  never  so  attractive  as  the  Ameri- 
can girls  of  this  period  ;  and  if  we  had  a 
Pheidias  who  could  put  their  charms  in 
marble,  all  the  antique  galleries  would 
close  up  and  go  out  of  business. 

But  it  must  be  understood  that  in 
regard  to  them,  as  to  the  dictionaries,  it 
is  necessary  to  "  get  the  best."  Not  all 
women  are  equally  interesting,  and  some 
of  those  on  whom  most  educational 
money  is  lavished  are  the  least  so.  It 
can    be  said  broadly  that   everybody  is 


interesting  up  to  a  certain  point.  Tlicre 
is  no  human  being  from  whom  the  in- 
quiring mind  cannot  learn  something. 
It  is  so  with  women.  Some  are  interest- 
ing for  five  minutes,  some  for  ten,  some 
for  an  hour;  some  are  not  exhausted  in 
a  whole  day  ;  and  some  (and  this  shows 
the  signal  leniency  of  Providence)  are 
perennially  entertaining,  even  in  the 
presence  of  masculine  stupidity.  Of 
course  the  radical  trouble  of  this  world 
is  that  there  are  not  more  people  who 
are  interesting  comrades,  day  in  and  day 
out,  for  a  lifetime.  It  is  greatly  to  the 
credit  of  American  women  that  so  many 
of  them  have  this  quality,  and  have 
developed  it,  unprotected,  in  free  com- 
petition with  all  countries  which  have 
been  pouring  in  women  without  the  least 
duty  laid  upon  their  grace  or  beauty. 
We  have  a  tariff  upon  knowledge  —  we 
try  to  shut  out  all  of  that  by  a  duty  on 
books ;  we  have  a  tariff  on  piety  and  in- 
telligence in  a  duty  on  clergymen ;  we 
try  to  exclude  art  by  a  levy  on  it ;  but  we 
have  never  excluded  the  raw  material  of 
beauty,  and  the  result  is  that  we  can  sue- 


ccssfully  compete  in  the  markets  of  the 
world. 

This,  however,  is  a  digression.  The 
reader  wants  to  know  what  this  quality 
of  being  interesting,  has  to  do  with  girls' 
schools.  It  is  admitted  that  if  one  goes 
into  a  new  place  he  estimates  the  agree- 
ableness  of  it  according  to  the  number 
of  people  it  contains  with  whom  it  is  a 
pleasure  to  converse,  who  have  either  the 
ability  to  talk  well  or  the  intelligence  to 
listen  appreciatingly  even  if  deceivingly, 
whose  society  has  the  beguiling  charm  that 
makes  even  natural  scenery  satisfactory. 
It  is  admitted  also  that  in  our  day  the 
burden  of  this  end  of  life,  making  it  agree- 
able, is  mainly  thrown  upon  women. 
Men  make  their  business  an  excuse  for 
not  being  entertaining,  or  the  few  who 
cultivate  the  mind  (aside  from  the  politi- 
cians, who  always  try  to  be  winning) 
scarcely  think  it  worth  while  to  contrib- 
ute anything  to  make  society  bright  and 
engaging.  Now  if  the  girls'  schools  and 
colleges,  technical  and  other,  merely  add 
to  the  number  of  people  who  have  prac- 
tical   trainina:    and    knowledge   without 


personal  charm,  what  becomes  of  social 
life  ?  We  are  impressed  with  the  excel- 
lence of  the  schools  and  colleges  for 
women — impressed  also  with  the  co-ed- 
ucating institutions.  There  is  no  sight 
more  inspiring  than  an  assemblage  of 
four  or  five  hundred  young  women  at- 
tacking literature,  science,  and  all  the 
arts.  The  grace  and  courage  of  the  attack 
alone  are  worth  all  it  costs.  All  the  arts 
and  science  and  literature  are  benefited, 
but  one  of  the  chief  purposes  that  should 
be  in  view  is  unattained  if  the  young 
women  are  not  made  more  interesting, 
both  to  themselves  and  to  others.  Ability 
to  earn  an  independent  living  may  be 
conceded  to  be  important,  health  is  indis- 
pensable, and  beauty  of  face  and  form 
are  desirable ;  knowledge  is  priceless, 
and  unselfish  amiability  is  above  the 
price  of  rubies ;  but  how  shall  we  set  a 
value,  so  far  as  the  pleasure  of  living  is 
concerned,  upon  the  power  to  be  inter- 
esting ?  We  hear  a  good  deal  about  the 
highly  educated  young  woman  with 
reverence,  about  the  emancipated  young 
woman    with    fear  and    trembling,    but 


I 


what  can  take  the  place  of  the  interest- 
ing woman?  Anxiety  is  this  moment 
agitating  the  minds  of  tens  of  thousands 
of  mothers  about  the  education  of  their 
daughters.  Suppose  their  education 
should  be  directed  to  the  purpose  of 
making  them  interesting  women,  what  a 
fascinating  country  this  would  be  about 
the  year  1900 ! 


?1Ve  the 

^-- MEN  AC 


IVE  the  men  a  chance.  Upon  the 
young  women  of  America  lies  a  great  re- 
sponsibility. The  next  generation  will 
be  pretty  much  what  they  choose  to 
make  it ;  and  what  are  they  doing  for  the 
elevation  of  young  men  ?  It  is  true  that 
there  are  the  colleges  for  men,  which  still 
perform  a  good  work  —  though  some  of 
them  run  a  good  deal  more  to  a  top-dress- 
ing of  accomplishments  than  to  a  sub- 
soiling  of  discipline  —  but  these  colleges 
reach  comparatively  few.  There  remain 
the  great  mass  who  are  devoted  to  busi- 
ness and  pleasure,  and  only  get  such  intel- 
lectual cultivation  as  society  gives  them 
or  they  chance  to  pick  up  in  current 
publications.  The  young  women  are  the 
leisure  class,  consequently — so  we  hear 
— the  cultivated  class.  Taking  a  cer- 
tain large  proportion  of  our  society,  the 
women  in  it  toil  not,    neither  do  they 


spin  ;  they  do  little  or  no  domestic  work  ; 
they  engage  in  no  producti\'e  occupation. 
They  are  set  apart  for  a  high  and  enno- 
bling service — the  cultivation  of  the  mind 
and  the  rescue  of  society  from  material- 
ism. They  are  the  influence  that  keeps 
life  elevated  and  sweet  —  are  they  not? 
For  what  other  purpose  are  they  set 
apart  in  elegant  leisure  ?  And  nobly  do 
they  climb  up  to  the  duties  of  their  posi- 
tion. They  associate  together  in  es- 
oteric, intellectual  societies.  Every  one 
is  a  part  of  many  clubs,  the  object  of 
which  is  knowledge  and  the  broaden- 
ing of  the  intellectual  horizon.  Science, 
languages,  literature,  are  their  daily  food. 
They  can  speak  in  tongues ;  they  can 
talk  about  the  solar  spectrum  ;  they  can 
interpret  Chaucer,  criticise  Shakespeare, 
understand  Browning.  There  is  no  liter- 
ature, ancient  or  modern,  that  they  do 
not  dig  up  by  the  roots  and  turn  over, 
no  history  that  they  do  no.t  drag  before  the 
club  for  final  judgment.  In  every  little 
village  there  is  this  intellectual  stir  and 
excitement ;  why,  even  in  New  York, 
readings  interfere  with  the  german  ;  and 


Boston  !  Boston  is  no  longer  divided 
into  wards,  but  into  Browning  "  sec- 
tions." 

All  this  is  mainly  the  work  of  wom- 
en. The  men  are  sometimes  admitted, 
are  even  hired  to  perform  and  be  encour- 
aged and  criticised  ;  that  is,  men  who  are 
already  highly  cultivated,  or  who  are  in 
sympathy  with  the  noble  feminization 
of  the  age.  It  is  a  glorious  movement. 
Its  professed  object  is  to  give  an  intel- 
lectual lift  to  society.  And  no  doubt, 
unless  all  reports  are  exaggerated,  it  is 
making  our  great  leisure  class  of  women 
highly  intellectual  beings.  But,  encour- 
aging as  this  prospect  is,  it  gives  us 
pause.  Who  are  these  young  women  to 
associate  with  ?  —  with  whom  are  they  to 
hold  high  converse  ?  For  life  is  a  two- 
fold affair.  And  meantime  what  is  being 
done  for  the  young  men  who  are  ex- 
pected to  share  in  the  high  society  of  the 
future  ?  Will  not  the  young  women  by- 
and-by  find  themselves  in  a  lonesome 
place,  cultivated  away  beyond  their 
natural  comrades?  Where  will  they 
spend    their    evenings?     This    sobering 


25 


thought  suggests  a  duty  that  the  young 
women  are  neglecting.  We  refer  to  the 
education  of  the  young  men.  It  is  all  very 
well  for  them  to  form  clubs  for  their  own 
advancement,  and  they  ought  not  to  in- 
cur the  charge  of  selfishness  in  so  doing ; 
but  how  much  better  would  they  fulfil 
their  mission  if  they  would  form  special 
societies  for  the  cultivation  of  young 
men  !  —  sort  of  intellectual  mission  bands. 
Bring  them  into  the  literary  circle.  Make 
it  attractive  for  them.  Women  with 
their  attractions,  not  to  speak  of  their 
wiles,  can  do  anything  they  set  out  to  do. 
They  can  elevate  the  entire  present  gen- 
eration of  young  men,  if  they  give  their 
minds  to  it,  to  care  for  the  intellectual 
pursuits  they  care  for.  Give  the  men  a 
chance,  and  — 

Musing  along  in  this  way  we  are  sud- 
denly pulled  up  by  the  reflection  that  it 
is  impossible  to  make  an  unqualified 
statement  that  is  wholly  true  about  any- 
thing. What  chance  have  I,  anyway  ?  in- 
quires the  young  man  who  thinks  .some- 
times and  occasionally  wants  to  read. 
What  sort  of   leading-strings   are  these 


that  I  am  getting  into  ?  Look  at  the 
drift  of  things.  Is  the  feminization  of 
the  world  a  desirable  thing  for  a  vigor- 
ous future  ?  Are  the  women,  or  are  they 
not,  taking  all  the  virility  out  of  litera- 
ture ?  Answer  me  that.  All  the  novels 
are  written  by,  for,  or  about  women  — 
brought  to  their  standard.  Even  Henry 
James,  who  studies  the  sex  untiringly, 
speaks  about  the  "feminization  of  litera- 
ture." They  write  most  of  the  news- 
paper correspondence  —  and  write  it  for 
women.  They  are  even  trying  to  femin- 
ize the  colleges.  Granted  that  woman  is 
the  superior  being ;  all  the  more,  what 
chance  is  there  for  man  if  this  sort  of 
thing  goes  on  ?  Are  you  going  to  make 
a  race  of  men  on  feminine  fodder  ?  And 
here  is  the  still  more  perplexing  part  of 
it.  Unless  all  analysis  of  the  female 
heart  is  a  delusion,  and  all  history  false, 
what  women  like  most  of  all  things  in 
this  world  is  a  Man,  virile,  forceful,  com- 
pelling, a  solid  rock  of  dependence,  a 
substantial  unfeminine  being,  whom  it 
is  some  satisfaction  and  glory  and  inter- 
est to  govern  and  rule  in  the  right  way, 


and  twist  round  the  feminine  finger.  If 
women  should  succeed  in  reducing  or 
raising — of  course  raising— men  to  the 
feminine  standard,  by  feminizing  soci- 
ety, literature,  the  colleges,  and  all  that, 
would  they  not  turn  on  their  creations  — 
for  even  the  Bible  intimates  that  wom- 
en are  uncertain  —  and  go  in  search 
of  a  Man  ?  It  is  this  sort  of  blind  in- 
stinct of  the  young  man  for  preserving 
himself  in  the  world  that  makes  him  so 
inaccessible  to  the  good  he  might  get 
from  the  prevailing  culture  of  the  lei- 
sure class. 


THE   ADVENT    OF   CANDOR 

Those  who  are  anxious  about  the  fate 
of  Christmas,  whether  it  is  not  becoming 
too  worldly  and  too  expensive  a  holiday 
to  be  indulged  in  except  by  the  very  poor, 
mark  with  pleasure  any  indications  that 
the  true  spirit  of  the  day — brotherhood 
and  self-abnegation  and  charity — is  infus- 
ing itself  into  modern  society.  The  sen- 
timental Christmas  of  thirty  years  ago 
could  not  last ;  in  time  the  manufactured 
jollity  got  to  be  more  tedious  and  a 
greater  strain  on  the  feelings  than  any 
misfortune  happening  to  one's  neighbor. 
Even  for  a  day  it  was  very  difficult  to 
buzz  about  in  the  cheery  manner  pre- 
scribed, and  the  reaction  put  human 
nature  in  a  bad  light.  Nor  was  it  much 
better  when  gradually  the  day  became 
one  of  Great  Expectations,  and  the  sweet 
spirit  of  it  was  quenched  in  worry  or 
soured  in  disappointment.     It  began  to 


take  on  the  aspect  of  a  great  lottery,  in 
which  one  class  expected  to  draw  in 
reverse  proportion  to  what  it  put  in,  and 
another  class  knew  that  it  would  only 
reap  as  it  had  sowed.  The  day,  blessed 
in  its  origin,  and  meaningless  if  there  is  a 
grain  of  selfishness  in  it,  was  thus  likely 
to  become  a  sort  of  Clearing-house  of  all 
obligations,  and  assume  a  commercial  as- 
pect that  took  the  heart  out  of  it — like 
the  enormous  receptions  for  paying  social 
debts  which  take  the  place  of  the  old- 
fashioned  hospitality.  Everybody  knew, 
meantime,  that  the  spirit  of  good-will,  the 
grace  of  universal  sympathy,  was  really 
growing  in  the  world,  and  that  it  was 
only  our  awkwardness  that,  by  striving 
to  cram  it  all  for  a  year  into  twenty-four 
hours,  made  it  seem  a  little  farcical.  And 
everybody  knows  that  when  goodness  be- 
comes fashionable,  goodness  is  likely  to 
suffer  a  little.  A  virtue  overdone  falls  on 
t'other  side.  And  a  holiday  that  takes  on 
such  proportions  that  the  Express  com- 
panies and  the  Post-office  cannot  handle 
it  is  in  danger  of  a  collapse.  In  consider- 
ation of  these  things,  and  because,  as  has 


been  pointed  out  year  after  year,  Christ- 
mas is  becoming  a  burden,  the  load  of 
which  is  looked  forward  to  with  appre- 
hension— and  back  on  with  nervous  pros- 
tration— fear  has  been  expressed  that  the 
dearest  of  all  holidays  in  Christian  lands 
would  have  to  go  again  under  a  sort  of 
Puritan  protest,  or  into  a  retreat  for  rest 
and  purification. 

We  are  enabled  to  announce  for  the 
encouragement  of  the  single-minded  in 
this  best  of  all  days,  at  the  close  of  a 
year  which  it  is  best  not  to  characterize, 
that  those  who  stand  upon  the  social 
watch-towers  in  Europe  and  America 
begin  to  see  a  light — or,  it  would  be  bet- 
ter to  say,  to  perceive  a  spirit — in  society 
which  is  likely  to  change  many  things, 
and,  among  others,  to  work  a  return  of 
Christian  simplicity.  As  might  be  ex- 
pected in  these  days,  the  spirit  is  ex- 
hibited in  the  sex  which  is  first  at  the 
wedding  and  last  in  the  hospital  ward. 
And  as  might  have  been  expected,  also, 
this  spirit  is  shown  by  the  young  woman 
of  the  period,  in  whose  hands  are  the 
issues  of  the  future.     If  she  preserve  her 


present  mind  long  enough,  Christmas 
will  become  a  day  that  will  satisfy  every 
human  being,  for  the  purpose  of  the  young 
woman  will  pervade  it.  The  tendency  of 
the  young  woman  generally  to  simplicity, 
of  the  American  young  woman  to  a  cer- 
tain restraint  (at  least  when  abroad),  to  a 
deference  to  her  elders,  and  to  tradition, 
has  been  noted.  The  present  phenomenon 
is  quite  beyond  this,  and  more  radical.  It 
is,  one  may  venture  to  say,  an  attempt  to 
conform  the  inner  being  to  the  outward 
simplicity.  If  one  could  suspect  the 
young  woman  of  taking  up  any  line  not 
original,  it  might  be  guessed  that  the 
present  fashion  (which  is  bewildering  the 
most  worldly  men  with  a  new  and  irre- 
sistible fascination)  was  set  by  the  self- 
revelations  of  Marie  BashkirtsefT.  Very 
likely,  however,  it  was  a  new  spirit  in  the 
world,  of  which  Marie  was  the  first  pub- 
lishing example.  Its  note  is  self-analysis, 
searching,  unsparing,  leaving  no  room  for 
the  deception  of  self  or  of  the  world.  Its 
leading  feature  is  extreme  candor.  It  is 
not  enough  to  tell  the  truth  (that  has 
been  told  before) ;  but  one  must  act  and 

3 


tell  the  whole  truth.  One  does  not  put 
on  the  shirt  front  and  the  standing  collar 
and  the  knotted  cravat  of  the  other  sex 
as  a  mere  form  ;  it  is  an  act  of  consecra- 
tion, of  rigid,  simple  come-out-ness  into 
the  light  of  truth.  This  noble  candor 
will  suffer  no  concealments.  She  would 
not  have  her  lover  even,  still  more  the 
general  world  of  men,  think  she  is  better, 
or  rather  other,  than  she  is.  Not  that 
she  would  like  to  appear  a  man  among 
men,  far  from  that ;  but  she  wishes  to 
talk  with  candor  and  be  talked  to  can- 
didly, without  taking  advantage  of  that 
false  shelter  of  sex  behind  which  women 
have  been  accused  of  dodging.  If  she  is 
nothing  else,  she  is  sincere,  one  might  say 
wantonly  sincere.  And  this  lucid,  candid 
inner  life  is  reflected  in  her  dress.  This 
is  not  only  simple  in  its  form,  in  its  lines; 
it  is  severe.  To  go  into  the  shop  of  a 
European  jnodiste  is  almost  to  put  one's 
self  into  a  truthful  and  candid  frame  of 
mind.  Those  leave  frivolous  ideas  behind 
who  enter  here.  The  modis/e  will  tell 
the  philosopher  that  it  is  now  the  fashion 
to  be  severe  ;  it  a  word,  it  isfesc/i.    Noth- 


ing  can  go  beyond  that.  And  it  symbol- 
izes the  whole  life,  its  self-examination, 
earnestness,  utmost  candor  in  speech  and 
conduct. 

The  statesman  who  is  busy  about  his 
tariff  and  his  reciprocity,  and  his  endeavor 
to  raise  money  like  potatoes,  may  little 
heed  and  much  undervalue  this  advent  of 
candor  into  the  world  as  a  social  force. 
But  the  philosopher  will  make  no  such 
mistake.  He  knows  that  they  who  build 
without  woman  build  in  vain,  and  that 
she  is  the  great  regenerator,  as  she  is  the 
great  destroyer.  He  knows  too  much  to 
disregard  the  gravity  of  any  fashionable 
movement.  He  knows  that  there  is  no 
power  on  earth  that  can  prevent  the  re- 
turn of  the  long  skirt.  And  that  if  the 
young  woman  has  decided  to  be  severe 
and  candid  and  frank  with  herself  and  in 
her  intercourse  with  others,  we  must  sub- 
mit and  thank  God. 

And  what  a  gift  to  the  world  is  this  for 
the  Christmas  season  !  The  clear-eyed 
young  woman  of  the  future,  always  dear 
and  often  an  anxiety,  will  this  year  be  an 
object  of  enthusiasm. 


HE  American  man  only  develops  him- 
self and  spreads  himself  and  grows  "for 
all  he  is  worth  "  in  the  Great  West.  He 
is  more  free  and  limber  there,  and  un- 
folds those  generous  peculiarities  and 
largenesses  of  humanity  which  never 
blossomed  before.  The  "environment" 
has  much  to  do  with  it.  The  great  spaces 
over  which  he  roams  contribute  to  the 
enlargement  of  his  mental  horizon.  There 
have  been  races  before  who  roamed  the 
illimitable  desert,  but  they  travelled  on 
foot  or  on  camel-back,  and  were  limited 
in  their  range.  There  was  nothing  con- 
tinental about  them,  as  there  is  about 
our  railway  desert  travellers,  who  swing 
along  through  thousands  of  miles  of 
sand  and  sage-bush  with  a  growing  con- 
tempt for  time  and  space.  But  expan- 
sive and  great  as  these  people  have  be- 
come under  the  new  conditions,  we  have 


a  fanc\^  that  the  development  of  the  race 
has  only  just  begun,  and  that  the  future 
will  show  us  in  perfection  a  kind  of  man 
new  to  the  world.  Out  somewhere  on 
the  Sante  Fe  route,  where  the  desert  of 
one  day  was  like  the  desert  of  the  day 
before,  and  the  Pullman  car  rolls  and 
swings  over  the  wide  waste  beneath  the 
blue  sky  day  after  day,  under  its  black  flag 
of  smoke,  in  the  early  gray  of  morning, 
when  the  men  were  waiting  their  turns  at 
the  ablution  bowls,  a  slip  of  a  boy,  perhaps 
aged  seven,  stood  balancing  himself  on 
his  little  legs,  clad  in  knickerbockers, 
biding  his  time,  with  all  the  nonchalance 
of  an  old  campaigner.  "  How  did  you 
sleep,  cap  ?"  asked  a  well-meaning  elderly 
gentleman.  "  Well,  thank  you,"  was  the 
dignified  response  ;  "  as  I  always  do  on  a 
slccpiiig-car."  Always  does  ?  Great  hor- 
rors !  Hardly  out  of  his  swaddling- 
clothes,  and  yet  he  always  sleeps  well  in  a 
sleeper !  Was  he  born  on  the  wheels  .'  was 
he  cradled  in  a  Pullman?  He  has  always 
been  in  motion,  probably  ;  he  was  started 
at  thirty  miles  an  hour,  no  doubt,  this 
marvellous  boy  of  our  new  era.     He  was 


38 


not  born  in  a  liousc  at  rest,  but  the  loco- 
motive snatched  him  along  with  a  shriek 
and  a  roar  before  his  eyes  were  fairly 
open,  and  he  was  rocked  in  a  "  section," 
and  his  first  sensation  of  life  was  that  of 
moving  rapidly  over  vast  arid  spaces, 
through  cattle  ranges  and  along  can- 
ons. The  effect  of  quick  and  easy 
locomotion  on  character  may  have  been 
noted  before,  but  it  seems  that  here  is 
the  production  of  a  new  sort  of  man,  the 
direct  product  of  our  railway  era.  It  is 
not  simply  that  this  boy  is  mature,  but 
he  must  be  a  different  and  a  nobler  sort 
of  boy  than  one  born,  say,  at  home  or  on 
a  canal-boat ;  for,  whether  he  was  born  on 
the  rail  or  not,  he  belongs  to  the  railway 
system  of  civilization.  Before  he  gets  into 
trousers  he  is  old  in  experience,  and  he 
has  discounted  many  of  the  novelties 
that  usually  break  gradually  on  the  pil- 
grim in  this  world.  He  belongs  to  the 
new  expansive  race  that  must  live  in 
motion,  whose  proper  home  is  the  Pull- 
man (which  will  probaby  be  improved  in 
time  into  a  dustless,  sweet-smelling,  well- 
aired  bedroom),  and  whose  domestic  life 


will  be  on  the  wing,  so  to  speak.  The 
Inter-State  Commerce  Bill  will  pass  him 
along  without  friction  from  end  to  end  of 
the  Union,  and  perhaps  a  uniform  divorce 
law  will  enable  him  to  change  his  mari- 
tal relations  at  any  place  where  he  hap- 
pens to  dine.  This  promising  lad  is  only  a 
faint  itimation  of  what  we  are  all  coming 
to  when  we  fully  acquire  the  freedom  of 
the  continent,  and  come  into  that  expan- 
siveness  of  feeling  and  of  language  which 
characterizes  the  Great  West.  It  is  a 
burst  of  joyous  exuberance  that  comes 
from  the  sense  of  an  illimitable  horizon. 
It  shows  itself  in  the  tender  words  of  a 
local  newspaper  at  Bowie,  Arizona,  on 
the  death  of  a  beloved  citizen  :  "  '  Death 
loves  a  shining  mark,'  and  she  hit  a 
dandy  when  she  turned  loose  on  Jim." 
And  also  in  the  closing  words  of  a  New 
Mexico  obituary,  which  the  Kansas  Mag- 
azine quotes :  "  Her  tired  spirit  was  re- 
leased from  the  pain-racking  body  and 
soared  aloft  to  eternal  glory  at  4.30  Den- 
ver time."  We  die,  as  it  were,  in  motion, 
as  we  sleep,  and  there  is  nowhere  any 
boundary  to  our  expansion.    Perhaps  we 


shall  never  again  know  any  rest  as  we 
now  understand  the  term  —  rest  being 
only  change  of  motion  —  and  we  shall 
not  be  able  to  sleep  except  on  the  cars,  and 
whether  we  die  by  Denver  time  or  by 
the  90th  meridian,  we  shall  only  change 
our  time.  Blessed  be  this  slip  of  a  boy 
who  is  a  man  before  he  is  an  infant,  and 
teaches  us  what  rapid  transit  can  do  for 
our  race  !  The  only  thing  that  can  pos- 
sibly hinder  us  in  our  progress  will  be 
second  childhood  ;  we  have  abolished 
first. 


THE    ELPXTRIC  WAY 

We  are  quite  in  the  electric  way.  We 
boast  that  we  have  made  electricity  our 
slave,  but  the  slave  whom  we  do  not  un- 
derstand is  our  master.  And  before  we 
know  him  we  shall  be  transformed.  Mr. 
Edison  proposes  to  send  us  over  the 
country  at  the  rate  of  one  hundred  miles 
an  hour.  This  pleases  us,  because  we 
fancy  we  shall  save  time,  and  because  we 
are  taught  that  the  chief  object  in  life  is 
to  "  get  there  "  quickly.  We  really  have 
an  idea  that  it  is  a  gain  to  annihilate  dis- 
tance, forgetting  that  as  a  matter  of  per- 
sonal experience  we  are  already  too  near 
most  people.  But  this  speed  by  rail  will 
enable  us  to  live  in  Philadelphia  and  do 
business  in  New  York.  It  will  make  the 
city  of  Chicago  two  hundred  miles  square. 
And  the  bigger  Chicago  is,  the  more  im- 
portant this  world  becomes.  This  pleas- 
ing anticipation  —  that  of  travelling  by 


lightning,  and  all  being  huddled  together 
—  is  nothing  to  the  promised  universal  il- 
lumination by  a  diffused  light  that  shall 
make  midnight  as  bright  as  noonday.  We 
shall  then  save  all  the  time  there  is, 
and  at  the  age  of  thirty-five  have  lived 
the  allotted  seventy  years,  and  long,  if  not 
for  Gottcrddmineriing ,  at  least  for  some 
world  where,  by  touching  a  button,  we 
can  discharge  our  limbs  of  electricity  and 
take  a  little  repose.  The  most  restless 
and  ambitious  of  us  can  hardly  conceive 
of  Chicago  as  a  desirable  future  state  of 
existence. 

This,  however,  is  only  the  external  or 
superficial  view  of  the  subject;  at  the 
best  it  is  only  symbolical.  Mr.  Edison  is 
wasting  his  time  in  objective  experiments, 
while  we  are  in  the  deepest  ignorance  as 
to  our  electric  personality  or  our  personal 
electricity.  We  begin  to  apprehend  that 
we  are  electric  beings,  that  these  outward 
manifestations  of  a  subtle  form  are  only 
hints  of  our  internal  state.  Mr.  Edison 
should  turn  his  attention  from  physics  to 
humanity  electrically  considered  in  its  so- 
cial condition.     We  have  heard  a  great 


deal  about  affinities.  We  arc  told  that 
one  person  is  positive  and  another  nega- 
tive, and  that  representing  socially  oppo- 
site poles  they  should  come  together  and 
make  an  electric  harmony,  that  two  pos- 
itives or  two  negatives  repel  each  other, 
and  if  conventionally  united  end  in  di- 
vorce, and  so  on.  We  read  that  such  a 
man  is  magnetic,  meaning  that  he  can 
poll  a  great  many  votes ;  or  that  such  a 
woman  thrilled  her  audience,  meaning 
probably  that  they  were  in  an  electric 
condition  to  be  shocked  by  her.  Now 
this  is  what  we  want  to  find  out  —  to 
know  if  persons  are  really  magnetic  or 
sympathetic,  and  how  to  tell  whether  a 
person  is  positive  or  negative.  In  politics 
we  are  quite  at  sea.  What  is  the  good  of 
sending  a  man  to  Washington  at  the  rate 
of  a  hundred  miles  an  hour  if  we  are  un- 
certain of  his  electric  state  .^  The  ideal 
House  of  Representatives  ought  to  be 
pretty  nearly  balanced — half  positive,  half 
negative.  Some  Congresses  seem  to  be 
made  up  pretty  much  of  negatives.  The 
time  for  the  electrician  to  test  the  candi- 
date is  before  he  is  put  in   nomination. 


46 


not  dump  him  into  Congress  as  \vc  do 
now,  utterly  ignorant  of  whether  his  cur- 
rents run  from  his  heels  to  his  head  or 
from  his  head  to  his  heels,  uncertain,  in- 
deed, as  to  whether  he  has  magnetism  to 
run  in  at  all.  Nothing  could  be  more  un- 
scientific than  the  process  and  the  result. 
In  social  life  it  is  infinitely  worse.  You, 
an  electric  unmarried  man,  enter  a  room 
full  of  attractive  women.  How  are  you 
to  know  who  is  positive  and  who  is  nega- 
tive, or  who  is  a  maiden  lady  in  equilib- 
rium, if  it  be  true,  as  scientists  afiirm,  that 
the  genus  old  maid  is  one  in  whom  the 
positive  currents  neutralize  the  negative 
currents  .-^  Your  affinity  is  perhaps  the 
plainest  woman  in  the  room.  But  beauty 
is  a  juggling  sprite,  entirely  uncontrolled 
by  electricity,  and  you  are  quite  likely  to 
make  a  mistake.  It  is  absurd  the  way  we 
blunder  on  in  a  scientific  age.  We  touch 
a  button,  and  are  married.  The  judge 
touches  another  button,  and  we  are  di- 
vorced. If  when  we  touched  the  first  but- 
ton it  revealed  us  both  negatives,  we 
should  start  back  in  horror,  for  it  is  only 
before  engagement   that   two   negatives 


make  an  afrirniati\c.  That  is  the  reason 
that  some  clergymen  refuse  to  marry  a 
divorced  woman ;  they  see  that  she  has 
made  one  electric  mistake,  and  fear  she 
will  make  another.  It  is  all  very  well  for 
the  officiating  clergyman  to  ask  the  two 
intending  to  commit  matrimony  if  they 
have  a  license  from  the  town  clerk,  if 
they  are  of  age  or  have  the  consent  of 
parents,  and  have  a  million  ;  but  the  vital 
point  is  omitted.  Are  they  electric  affin- 
ities ?  It  should  be  the  duty  of  the  town 
clerk,  by  a  battery,  or  by  some  means  to 
be  discovered  by  electricians,  to  find  out 
the  galvanic  habit  of  the  parties,  their 
prevailing  electric  condition.  Tempora- 
rily they  may  seem  to  be  in  harmony,  and 
may  deceive  themselves  into  the  belief 
that  they  are  at  opposite  poles  equidis- 
tant from  the  equator,  and  certain  to  meet 
on  that  imaginary  line  in  matrimonial 
bliss.  Dreadful  will  be  the  awakening  to 
an  insipid  life,  if  they  find  they  both  have 
the  same  sort  of  currents.  It  is  said  that 
women  change  their  minds  and  their  dis- 
positions, that  men  are  fickle,  and  that 
both  give  way  after  marriage  to  natural 


48 

inclinations  that  were  suppressed  while 
they  were  on  the  good  behavior  that  the 
supposed  necessit}^  of  getting  married  im- 
poses.   This  is  so  notoriously  true  that  it 
ought  to  create  a  public  panic.    But  there 
is  hope  in  the  new  light.     If  we  under- 
stand  it,  persons  are  born   in  a  certain 
electrical    condition,    and     substantially 
continue  in  it,  however  much  they  may 
apparently  wobble  about  under  the  in- 
fluence  of    infirm    minds    and    acquired 
wickedness.     There  are,  of  course,  varia- 
tions of  the  compass  to  be  reckoned  with, 
and  the  magnet  may  occasionally  be  be- 
witched by  near  and  powerful  attracting 
objects.     But,  on  the  whole,  the  magnet 
remains  the  same,  and  it  is  probable  that 
a  person's  normal   electric   condition  is 
the  thing  in  him  least  liable  to  dangerous 
variation.     If  this  be  true,  the  best  basis 
for  matrimony  is  the  electric,  and  our  so- 
cial  life   would   have   fewer  disappoint- 
ments if  men  and  women  went  about  la- 
belled with  their  scientifically  ascertained 
electric  qualities. 


6anahufband\ 


AN  a  husband  open  his  wife's  letters? 
That  would  depend,  many  would  say, 
upon  what  kind  of  a  husband  he  is.  But 
it  cannot  be  put  aside  in  that  flippant 
manner,  for  it  is  a  legal  right  that  is  in 
question,  and  it  has  recently  been  de- 
cided in  a  Paris  tribunal  that  the  hus- 
band has  the  right  to  open  the  letters 
addressed  to  his  wife.  Of  course  in 
America  an  appeal  would  instantly  be 
taken  from  this  decision,  and  perhaps  by 
husbands  themselves  ;  for  in  this  world 
rights  are  becoming  so  impartially  dis- 
tributed that  this  privilege  granted  to 
the  husband  might  at  once  be  extended 
to  the  wife,  and  she  would  read  all  his 
business  correspondence,  and  his  busi- 
ness is  sometimes  various  and  compli- 
cated. The  Paris  decision  must  be  based 
upon  the  familiar  formula  that  man  and 


wife  are  one,  and  that  that  one  is  the  hus- 
band.* If  a  man  has  the  right  to  read  all  the 
letters  written  to  his  wife,  being  his  prop- 
erty by  reason  of  his  ownership  of  her, 
why  may  he  not  have  a  legal  right  to 
know  all  that  is  said  to  her  ?  The  ques- 
tion is  not  whether  a  wife  ought  to  re- 
ceive letters  that  her  husband  may  not 
read,  or  listen  to  talk  that  he  may  not 
hear,  but  whether  he  has  a  sort  of  lord- 
ship that  gives  him  privileges  which  she 
does  not  enjoy.  In  our  modern  notion 
of  marriage,  which  is  getting  itself  ex- 
pressed in  statute  law,  marriage  is  sup- 
posed to  rest  on  mutual  trust  and  mutual 
rights.  In  theory  the  husband  and  wife 
are  still  one,  and  there  can  nothing  come 
into  the  life  of  one  that  is  not  shared  by 
the  other;  in  fact,  if  the  marriage  is  perfect 
and  the  trust  absolute,  the  personalitj'^  of 
each  is  respected  by  the  other,  and  each 
is  freely  the  judge  of  what  shall  be  con- 
tributed to  the  common  confidence  ;  and 
if  there  are  any  concealments,  it  is  well 
believed  that  they  are  for  the  mutual 
good.  If  every  one  were  as  perfect  in 
the  marriage  relation  as  those  who  are 


reading  these  lines,  the  question  of  the 
wife's  letters  would  never  arise.  The 
man,  trusting  his  wife,  would  not  care  to 
pry  into  any  little  secrets  his  wife  might 
have,  or  bother  himself  about  her  cor- 
respondence ;  he  would  know,  indeed, 
that  if  he  had  lost  her  real  affection,  a 
surveillance  of  her  letters  could  not 
restore  it. 

Perhaps  it  is  a  modern  notion  that 
marriage  is  a  union  of  trust  and  not  of 
suspicion,  of  expectation  of  faithfulness 
the  more  there  is  freedom.  At  any  rate, 
the  tendency,  notwithstanding  the  French 
decision,  is  away  from  the  common-law 
suspicion  and  tyranny  towards  a  higher 
trust  in  an  enlarged  freedom.  And  it  is 
certain  that  the  rights  cannot  all  be  on  one 
side  and  the  duties  on  the  other.  If  the 
husband  legally  may  compel  his  wife  to 
show  him  her  letters,  the  courts  will  before 
long  grant  the  same  privilege  to  the  wife. 
But,  without  pressing  this  point,  we  hold 
strongly  to  the  s^credness  of  correspon- 
dence. The  letters  one  receives  are  in 
one  sense  not  his  own.  They  contain  the 
confessions  of  another  soul,  the   confi- 


dences  of  another  mind,  that  would  be 
rudely  treated  if  given  any  sort  of  pub- 
licity. And  while  husband  and  wife  are 
one  to  each  other,  they  are  two  in  the  eyes 
of  other  people,  and  it  may  well  happen 
that  a  friend  will  desire  to  impart  some- 
thing to  a  discreet  woman  which  she 
would  not  intrust  to  the  babbling  hus- 
band of  that  woman.  Every  life  must 
have  its  own  privacy  and  its  own  place  of 
retirement.  The  letter  is  of  all  things 
the  most  personal  and  intimate  thing. 
Its  bloom  is  gone  when  another  eye  sees 
it  before  the  one  for  which  it  was  intended. 
Its  aroma  all  escapes  when  it  is  first 
opened  by  another  person.  One  might 
as  well  wear  second-hand  clothing  as  get 
a  second-hand  letter.  Here,  then,  is  a 
sacred  right  that  ought  to  be  respected, 
and  can  be  respected  without  any  injury 
to  domestic  life.  The  habit  in  some 
families  for  the  members  of  it  to  show 
each  other's  letters  is  a  most  disenchant- 
ing one.  It  is  just  in  the  family,  between 
persons  most  intimate,  that  these  delica- 
cies of  consideration  for  the  privacy  of 
each  ought  to  be  most   respected.     No 


one  can  estimate  probably  how  much  of 
the  refinement,  of  the  delicacy  of  feeling, 
has  been  lost  to  the  world  by  the  intro- 
duction of  the  postal-card.  Anything 
written  on  a  postal-card  has  no  personal- 
ity ;  it  is  banal,  and  has  as  little  power  of 
charming  any  one  who  receives  it  as  an 
advertisement  in  the  newspaper.  It  is 
not  simply  the  cheapness  of  the  com- 
munication that  is  vulgar,  but  the  pub- 
licity of  it.  One  may  have  perhaps  only  a 
cent's  worth  of  affection  to  send,  but  it 
seems  worth  much  more  when  enclosed 
in  an  envelope.  We  have  no  doubt, 
then,  that  on  general  principles  the  French 
decision  is  a  mistake,  and  that  it  tends 
rather  to  vulgarize  than  to  retain  the 
purity  and  delicacy  of  the  marriage  re- 
lation. And  the  judges,  so  long  even  as 
men  only  occupy  the  bench,  will  no 
doubt  reverse  it  when  the  logical  march 
of  events  forces  upon  them  the  question 
whether  the  wife  may  open  her  husband's 
letters. 


A   LEISURE   CLASS 

Foreign  critics  have  apologized  for 
real  or  imagined  social  and  literary  short- 
comings in  this  country  on  the  ground 
that  the  American  people  have  little  lei- 
sure. It  is  supposed  that  when  we  have 
a  leisure  class  we  shall  not  only  make  a 
better  showing  in  these  respects,  but  we 
shall  be  as  agreeable  —  having  time  to 
devote  to  the  art  of  being  agreeable — as 
the  English  are.  But  we  already  have  a 
considerable  and  increasing  number  of 
people  who  can  command  their  own  time 
if  we  have  not  a  leisure  class,  and  the  so- 
ciologist might  begin  to  study  the  effect 
of  this  leisureliness  upon  society.  Are 
the  people  who,  by  reason  of  a  compe- 
tence or  other  accidents  of  good-fortune, 
have  most  leisure,  becoming  more  agree- 
able.'' and  are  they  devoting  themselves 
to  the  elevation  of  the  social  tone,  or  to 
the  improvement  of  our  literature  .''   How- 


ever  this  question  is  answered,  a  strong 
appeal  might  be  made  to  the  people  of 
leisure  to  do  not  only  what  is  expected 
of  them  by  foreign  observers,  but  to  take 
advantage  of  their  immense  opportuni- 
ties. In  a  republic  there  is  no  room  for 
a  leisure  class  that  is  not  useful.  Those 
who  use  their  time  merely  to  kill  it,  in 
imitation  of  those  born  to  idleness  and 
to  no  necessity  of  making  an  exertion, 
may  be  ornamental,  but  having  no  root 
in  any  established  privilege  to  sustain 
them,  they  will  soon  wither  away  in  this 
atmosphere,  as  a  flower  would  which 
should  set  up  to  be  an  orchid  when  it 
does  not  belong  to  the  orchid  family.  It 
is  required  here  that  those  who  are  eman- 
cipated from  the  daily  grind  should  vin- 
dicate their  right  to  their  position  not 
only  by  setting  an  example  of  self-cult- 
ure, but  by  contributing  something  to 
the  general  welfare.  It  is  thought  by 
many  that  if  society  here  were  established 
and  settled  as  it  is  elsewhere,  the  rich 
would  be  less  dominated  by  their  money 
and  less  conscious  of  it,  and  having  lei- 
sure, could  devote  themselves  even  more 


than  they  do  now  to  intellectual  and  spir- 
itual pursuits. 

Whether  these  anticipations  will  ever 
be  realized, and  whether  increased  leisure 
will  make  us  all  happy,  is  a  subject  of  im- 
portance ;  but  it  is  secondary,  and  in  a 
manner  incidental,  to  another  and  deep- 
er matter,  which  may  be  defined  as  the 
responsibility  of  attractiveness.  And  this 
responsibility  takes  two  forms — the  duty 
of  everyone  to  be  attractive,  and  the  dan- 
ger of  being  too  attractive.  To  be  win- 
ning and  agreeable  is  sometimes  reck- 
oned a  gift,  but  it  is  a  disposition  that 
can  be  cultivated ;  and,  in  a  world  so 
given  to  grippe  and  misapprehension  as 
this  is,  personal  attractiveness  becomes  a 
duty,  if  it  is  not  an  art,  that  might  be 
taught  in  the  public  schools.  It  used  to 
be  charged  against  New  Englanders  that 
they  regarded  this  gift  as  of  little  value, 
and  were  inclined  to  hide  it  under  a 
bushel,  and  it  was  said  of  some  of  their 
neighbors  in  the  Union  that  they  exag- 
gerated its  importance,  and  neglected  the 
weightier  things  of  the  law.  Indeed,  dis- 
putes have  arisen  as  to  what  attractive- 


ness  consisted  in  —  some  holding  that 
beauty  or  charm  of  manner  (which  is  al- 
most as  good)  and  sweetness  and  gayety 
were  sufficient,  while  others  held  that  a 
little  intelligence  sprinkled  in  was  essen- 
tial. But  one  thing  is  clear,  that  while 
women  were  held  to  strict  responsibility 
in  this  matter,  not  stress  enough  was  laid 
upon  the  equal  duty  of  men  to  be  attract- 
ive in  order  to  make  the  world  agree- 
able. Hence  it  is,  probably,  that  while 
no  question  has  been  raised  as  to  the  ef- 
fect of  the  higher  education  upon  the  at- 
tractiveness of  men,  the  colleges  for  girls 
have  been  jealously  watched  as  to  the  ef- 
fect they  were  likely  to  have  upon  the  at- 
tractiveness of  women.  Whether  the  col- 
lege years  of  a  young  man,  during  which 
he  knows  more  than  he  will  ever  know 
again,  are  his  most  attractive  period  is 
not  considered,  for  he  is  expected  to  de- 
velop what  is  in  him  later  on  ;  but  it  is 
gravely  questioned  whether  girls  who 
give  their  minds  to  the  highest  studies 
are  not  dropping  those  graces  of  person- 
al attractiveness  which  they  will  find  it 
difficult   to   pick   up  again.      Of  course 


such  a  question  as  this  could  never  arise 
except  in  just  such  a  world  as  this  is. 
For  in  an  ideal  world  it  could  be  shown 
that  the  highest  intelligence  and  the 
highest  personal  charm  are  twins.  If, 
therefore,  it  should  turn  out,  which  seems 
absurd,  that  college  -  educated  girls  are 
not  as  attractive  as  other  women  with 
less  advantages,  it  will  have  to  be  admit- 
ted that  something  is  the  matter  with 
the  young  ladies,  which  is  preposterous, 
or  that  the  system  is  still  defective.  For 
the  postulate  that  everybody  ought  to  be 
attractiv^e  cannot  be  abandoned  for  the 
sake  of  any  system.  Decision  on  this  sys- 
tem cannot  be  reached  without  long  ex- 
perience, for  it  is  always  to  be  remem- 
bered that  the  man's  point  of  view  of 
attractiveness  may  shift,  and  he  may 
come  to  regard  the  intellectual  graces 
as  supremely  attractive ;  while,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  woman  student  may  find 
that  a  winning  smile  is  just  as  efTective 
in  bringing  a  man  to  her  feet,  where  he 
belongs,  as  a  logarithm. 

The   danger  of  being   too   attractive, 
though    it    has    historic    illustration,    is 


thought  by  many  to  be  more  apparent 
than  real.  Merely  being  too  attractive 
has  often  been  confounded  with  a  love 
of  flirtation  and  conquest,  unbecoming 
always  in  a  man,  and  excused  in  a  woman 
on  the  ground  of  her  helplessness.  It 
could  easily  be  shown  that  to  use  per- 
sonal attractiveness  recklessly  to  the  ex- 
tent of  hopeless  beguilement  is  cruel,  and 
it  may  be  admitted  that  woman  ought  to 
be  held  to  strict  responsibility  for  her  at- 
tractiveness. The  lines  are  indeed  hard 
for  her.  The  duty  is  upon  her  in  this 
poor  world  of  being  as  attractive  as  she 
can,  and  yet  she  is  held  responsible  for 
all  the  mischief  her  attractiveness  pro- 
duces. As  if  the  blazing  sun  should  be 
called  to  account  by  people  with  weak 
eyes! 


WEALTH  ^.^ 


AND  •  GHARAGTEIi;^ 


J  HE  month  of  February  in  all  latitudes 
in  the  United  States  is  uncertain.  The 
birth  of  George  Washington  in  it  has  not 
raised  it  in  public  esteem.  In  the  North, 
it  is  a  month  to  flee  from  ;  in  the  South, 
at  best  it  is  a  waiting  month  —  a  month 
of  rain  and  fickle  skies.  A  good  deal  has 
been  done  for  it.  It  is  the  month  of  St. 
Valentine,  it  is  distinguished  by  the  leap- 
year  addition  of  a  day,  and  ought  to  be  a 
favorite  of  the  gentle  sex ;  but  it  re- 
mains a  sort  of  off  period  in  the  year. 
Its  brevity  recommends  it,  but  no  one 
would  take  any  notice  of  it  were  it 
not  for  its  effect  upon  character.  A 
month  of  rigid  weather  is  supposed  to 
brace  up  the  moral  nature,  and  a  month 
of  gentleness  is  supposed  to  soften  the 
asperities  of  the  disposition,  but  Febru- 
ary contributes  to  neither  of  these  ends. 
It  is  neither  a  tonic  nor  a  soother ;  that 


is,  in  most  parts  of  our  inexplicable  land. 
We  make  no  complaint  of  this.  It  is 
probably  well  to  have  a  period  in  the 
year  that  tests  character  to  the  utmost, 
and  the  person  who  can  enter  spring 
through  the  gate  of  February  a  better 
man  or  woman  is  likely  to  adorn  society 
the  rest  of  the  year. 

February,  however,  is  merely  an  illus- 
tration of  the  efifect  of  weather  upon  the 
disposition.  Persons  differ  in  regard  to 
their  sensitiveness  to  cloudy,  rainy,  and 
gloomy  days.  We  recognize  this  in  a 
general  way,  but  the  relation  of  temper 
and  disposition  to  the  weather  has  nev- 
er been  scientifically  studied.  Our  ob- 
servation of  the  influence  of  climate  is 
mostly  with  regard  to  physical  infirm- 
ities. We  know  the  effect  of  damp 
weather  upon  rheumatics,  and  of  the 
east  wind  upon  gouty  subjects,  but  too 
little  allowance  is  made  for  the  influence 
of  weather  upon  the  spirits  and  the  con- 
duct of  men.  We  know  that  a  long  pe- 
riod of  gloomy  weather  leads  to  suicides, 
and  we  observe  that  long -continued 
clouds  and  rain   beget  "crossness"  and 


64 


ill-temper,  and  wc  are  all  familiar  with 
the  universal  exhilaration  of  sunshine 
and  clear  air  upon  any  company  of  men 
and  women.  But  the  point  we  wish  to 
make  is  that  neither  society  nor  the  law 
makes  any  allowance  for  the  aberrations 
of  human  nature  caused  by  dull  and 
unpleasant  weather.  And  this  is  very 
singular  in  this  humanitarian  age,  when 
excuse  is  found  for  nearly  every  moral 
delinquency  in  heredity  or  environment, 
that  the  greatest  factor  of  discontent  and 
crookedness,  the  weather,  should  be  left 
out  of  consideration  altogether.  The  re- 
lation of  crime  to  the  temperature  and 
the  humidity  of  the  atmosphere  is  not 
taken  into  account.  Yet  crime  and 
eccentricity  of  conduct  are  very  much 
the  result  of  atmospheric  conditions, 
since  they  depend  upon  the  temper  and 
the  spirit  of  the  community.  Many  peo- 
ple are  habitually  blue  and  down-hearted 
in  sour  weather ;  a  long  spell  of  cloudy, 
damp,  cold  weather  depresses  everybody, 
lowers  hope,  tends  to  melancholy ;  and 
people  when  they  are  not  cheerful  are 
more  apt  to  fail  into  evil  ways,  as  a  rule, 


6s 


than  when  they  are  in  a  normal  state  of 
good-humor.  And  aside  from  crimes, 
the  vexatior.  the  friction,  the  domestic 
discontent  in  life,  are  provoked  by  bad 
weather.  We  should  like  to  have  some 
statistics  as  to  incompatibility  between 
married  couples  produced  by  damp  and 
raw  days,  and  to  know  whether  divorces 
are  more  numerous  in  the  States  that 
suffer  from  a  fickle  climate  than  in  those 
where  the  climate  is  more  equable.  It  is 
true  that  in  the  Sandwich  Islands  and  in 
Egypt  there  is  greater  mental  serenity, 
less  perturbation  of  spirit,  less  worry, 
than  in  the  changeable  United  States. 
Something  of  this  placidity  and  resigna- 
tion to  the  ills  inevitable  in  human  life  is 
due  to  an  even  climate,  to  the  constant 
sun  and  the  dry  air.  We  cannot  hope  to 
prevent  crime  and  sufifering  by  statistics, 
any  more  than  we  have  been  able  to  im- 
prove our  climate  (which  is  rather  worse 
now  than  before  the  scientists  took  it  in 
charge)  by  observations  and  telegraphic 
reports  ;  but  we  can,  by  careful  tabulation 
of  the  effects  of  bad  weather  upon  the 
spirits  of  a  community,  learn  what  places 
s 


in  the  Union  are  favorable  to  the  pro- 
duction of  chcerfuhiess  and  an  equal 
mind.  And  we  should  lift  a  load  of  rep- 
robation from  some  places  which  now 
have  a  reputation  for  surliness  and  un- 
amiability.  We  find  the  people  of  one 
place  hospitable,  light-hearted,  and  agree- 
able ;  the  people  of  another  place  cold, 
and  morose,  and  unpleasant.  It  would  be 
a  satisfaction  to  know  that  the  weather 
is  responsible  for  the  difTerence.  Obser- 
vation of  this  sort  would  also  teach  us 
doubtless  what  places  are  most  condu- 
cive to  literary  production,  what  to  hap- 
py homes  and  agreeing  wives  and  hus- 
bands. All  our  territory  is  mapped  out 
as  to  its  sanitary  conditions;  why  not 
have  it  colored  as  to  its  effect  upon  the 
spirits  and  the  enjoyment  of  life  .''  The 
suggestion  opens  a  vast  field  of  investi- 
gation. 


HERE  used  to  be  a  notion  going  round 
that  it  would  be  a  good  thing  for  peo- 
ple if  they  were  more  "  self-centred." 
Perhaps  there  was  talk  of  adding  a 
course  to  the  college  curriculum,  in  addi- 
tion to  that  for  training  the  all-compe- 
tent "journalist,"  for  the  self-centring  of 
the  young.  To  apply  the  term  to  a 
man  or  woman  was  considered  highly 
complimentary.  The  advisers  of  this 
state  of  mind  probably  meant  to  suggest 
a  desirable  equilibrium  and  mental  bal- 
ance ;  but  the  actual  effect  of  the  self- 
centred  training  is  illustrated  by  a  story 
told  of  Thomas  H,  Benton,  who  had  been 
described  as  an  egotist  by  some  of  the 
newspapers.  Meeting  Colonel  Frank 
Blair  one  day,  he  said  :  '*  Colonel  Blair, 
I  see  that  the  newspapers  call  me  an 
egotist.  I  wish  you  would  tell  me  frank- 
ly, as  a  friend,  if  you  think  the  charge  is 


true."  "  It  is  a  very  direct  question,  Mr. 
Benton,"  replied  Colonel  Blair,  "but  if 
you  want  my  honest  opinion,  I  am  com- 
pelled to  say  that  I  think  there  is  some 
foundation  for  the  charge."  "Well,  sir," 
said  Mr.  Benton,  throwing  his  head  back 
and  his  chest  forward,  "  the  difference 
between  me  and  these  little  fellows  is 
that  I  have  an  Ego  !"  Mr.  Benton  was 
an  interesting  man,  and  it  is  a  fair  con- 
sideration if  a  certain  amount  of  egotism 
does  not  add  to  the  interest  of  any  char- 
acter, but  at  the  same  time  the  self- 
centred  conditions  shut  a  person  off  from 
one  of  the  chief  enjoyments  to  be  got 
out  of  this  world,  namely,  a  recognition 
of  what  is  admirable  in  others  in  a  toler- 
ation of  peculiarities.  It  is  odd,  almost 
amusing,  to  note  how  in  this  country  peo- 
ple of  one  section  apply  their  local  stand- 
ards to  the  judgment  of  people  in  other 
sections,  very  much  as  an  Englishman 
uses  his  insular  yardstick  to  measure  all 
the  rest  of  the  world.  It  never  seems  to 
occur  to  people  in  one  locality  that  the 
manners  and  speech  of  those  of  another 
maybe  just  as  admirable  as  their  own,  and 


69 


they  get  a  good  deal  of  discomfort  out  of 
their  intercourse  with  strangers  by  reason 
of  their  inabihty  to  adapt  themselves  to 
anyways  not  their  own.  It  helps  greatly 
to  make  this  country  interesting  that 
nearly  every  State  has  its  peculiarities, 
and  that  the  inhabitants  of  different  sec- 
tions differ  in  manner  and  speech.  But 
next  to  an  interesting  person,  in  social 
value,  is  an  agreeable  one,  and  it  would  add 
vastly  to  the  agreeableness  of  life  if  our 
widely  spread  provinces  were  not  so  self- 
centred  in  their  notion  that  their  own  way 
is  the  best,  to  the  degree  that  they  criticise 
any  deviation  from  it  as  an  eccentricity. 
It  would  be  a  very  nice  world  in  these 
United  States  if  we  could  all  devote  our- 
selves to  finding  out  in  communities  what 
is  likable  rather  than  what  is  opposed  to 
our  experience;  that  is,  in  trying  to  adapt 
ourselves  to  others  rather  than  insisting 
that  our  own  standard  should  measure 
our  opinion  and  our  enjoyment  of  them. 
When  the  Kentuckian  describes  a  man 
as  a  "  high-toned  gentleman  "  he  means 
exactly  the  same  that  a  Bostonian  means 
when  he  says  that  a  man  is  a  "  very  good 


fellow,"  only  the  men  described  have  a 
different  culture,  a  different  personal  fla- 
vor ;  and  it  is  fortunate  that  the  Kentuck- 
ian  is  not  like  the  Bostonian,  for  each  has 
a  quality  that  makes  intercourse  with  him 
pleasant.  In  the  South  many  people 
think  they  have  said  a  severe  thing  when 
they  say  that  a  person  or  manner  is  thor- 
oughly Yankee  ;  and  many  New  England- 
ers  intend  to  express  a  considerable  lack 
in  what  is  essential  when  they  say  of  men 
and  women  that  they  are  very  Southern. 
When  the  Yankee  is  produced  he  may 
turn  out  a  cosmopolitan  person  of  the 
most  interesting  and  agreeable  sort ;  and 
the  Southerner  may  have  traits  and  pe- 
culiarities, growing  out  of  climate  and  so- 
cial life  unlike  the  New  England,  which 
are  altogether  charming.  We  talked  once 
with  a  Western  man  of  considerable  age 
and  experience  who  had  the  placid  mind 
that  is  sometimes,  and  may  more  and 
more  become,  the  characteristic  of  those 
who  live  in  flat  countries  of  illimitable 
horizons,  who  said  that  New  Yorkers, 
State  and  city,  all  had  an  assertive  sort 
of  smartness  that  was  very  disagreeable 


to  him.  And  a  lady  of  New  York  (a  city 
whose  dialect  the  novelists  are  beginning 
to  satirize)  was  much  disturbed  by  the 
flatness  of  speech  prevailing  in  Chicago, 
and  thought  something  should  be  done  in 
the  public  schoolstocorrect  the  pronunci- 
ation of  English.  There  doubtless  should 
be  a  common  standard  of  distinct,  round- 
ed, melodious  pronunciation,  as  there  is 
of  good  breeding,  and  it  is  quite  as  im- 
portant to  cultivate  the  voice  in  speaking 
as  in  singing,  but  the  people  of  the  United 
States  let  themselves  be  immensely  irri- 
tated by  local  differences  and  want  of  tol- 
eration of  sectional  peculiarities.  The 
truth  is  that  the  agreeable  people  are 
prettyevenly  distributed  over  the  country, 
and  one's  enjoyment  of  them  is  height- 
ened not  only  by  their  differences  of  man- 
ner, but  by  the  different  ways  in  which 
they  look  at  life,  unless  he  insists  upon 
applying  everywhere  the  yardstick  of  his 
own  locality.  If  the  Boston  woman  sets 
her  eye-glasses  at  a  critical  angle  towards 
the  laisscr /aire  flow  of  social  amenity  in 
New  Orleans,  and  the  New  Orleans  wom- 
an seeks  out  only  the  prim  and  conven- 


7*-. 


tional  in  Boston,  each  may  miss  the  op- 
portunity to  supplement  her  Ufe  by  some- 
thing wanting  and  desirable  in  it,  to  be 
gained  by  the  exercise  of  more  openness  of 
mind  and  toleration.  To  some  people  Yan- 
kee thrift  is  disagreeable ;  to  others, South- 
ern shiftlessness  is  intolerable.  To  some 
travellers  the  negro  of  the  South,  with  his 
tropical  nature.his  capacity  for  picturesque 
attitudes,hisabundant  trust  in  Providence, 
is  an  element  of  restfulness ;  and  if  the 
chief  object  of  life  is  happiness,  the  trav- 
eller may  take  a  useful  hint  from  the  race 
whose  utmost  desire,  in  a  fit  climate, 
would  be  fully  satisfied  by  a  shirt  and  a 
banana-tree.  But  to  another  traveller  the 
dusky,  careless  race  is  a  continual  atifront. 
If  a  person  is  born  with  an  "  Ego,"  and 
gets  the  most  enjoyment  out  of  the  world 
by  trying  to  make  it  revolve  about  himself, 
and  cannot  make  allowances  for  differ- 
ences, we  have  nothing  to  say  except  to 
express  pity  for  such  a  self-centred  condi- 
tion, which  shuts  him  out  of  the  never- 
failing  pleasure  there  is  in  entering  into 
and  understanding  with  sympathy  the  al- 
most infinite  variety  in  American  life. 


UVENTUS    MUNDI 

OMETIMES  the  world  seems 
very  old.  It  appeared  so  to  Ber- 
nard of  Cluny  in  the  twelfth  century,  when 
he  wrote : 

"  The  world  is  ver\'  evil. 
The  times  are  waxing  late." 

There  was  a  general  impression  among 
the  Christians  of  the  first  century  of  our 
era  that  the  end  was  near.  The  world 
must  have  seemed  very  ancient  to  the 
Egyptians  fifteen  hundred  years  before 
Christ,  when  the  Pyramid  of  Cheops  was 
a  relic  of  antiquity,  when  almost  the 
whole  circle  of  arts,  sciences,  and  litera- 
ture had  been  run  through,  when  every 
nation  within  reach  had  been  conquered, 
when  woman  had  been  developed  into 
one  of  the  most  fascinating  of  beings,  and 


even  reigned  more  absolutely  than  Eliza- 
beth or  Victoria  has  reigned  since  :  it 
was  a  pretty  tired  old  world  at  that  time. 
One  might  almost  say  that  the  further  we 
go  back  the  older  and  more  "  played  out " 
the  world  appears,  notwithstanding  that 
the  poets,  who  were  generally  pessimists 
of  the  present,  kept  harping  about  the 
youth  of  the  world  and  the  joyous  spon- 
taneity of  human  life  in  some  golden  age 
before  their  time.  In  fact,  the  world  h 
old  in  spots — in  Memphis  and  Boston  and 
Damascus  and  Salem  and  Ephesus.  Some 
of  these  places  are  venerable  in  traditions, 
and  some  of  them  are  actually  worn  out 
and  taking  a  rest  from  too  much  civiliza- 
tion—lying fallow,  as  the  saying  is.  But 
age  is  so  entirely  relative  that  to  many 
persons  the  landing  of  the  Mayfltnucr 
seems  more  remote  than  the  voyage  of 
Jason,  and  a  Mayflower  chest  a  more  an- 
tique piece  of  furniture  than  the  timbers 
of  the  Ark,  which  some  believe  can  still 
be  seen  on  top  of  Mount  Ararat, 

But,  speaking  generally,  the  world  is 
still  young  and  growing,  and  a  consider- 
able portion  of  it  uniinished.     The  oldest 


part,  indeed,  ihc  Laureiitiaii  Hills,  which 
wore  first  out  of  water,  is  still  only  sparsely 
settled  ;  and  no  one  pretends  that  Florida 
is  anythnig  like  finished,  or  that  the  delta 
of  the  Mississippi  is  in  anything  more 
than  the  process  of  formation.  Men  are 
so  young  and  lively  in  these  days  that 
they  cannot  wait  for  the  slow  processes 
of  nature,  but  they  fill  up  and  bank  up 
places,  like  Holland,  where  they  can  live; 
and  they  keep  on  exploring  and  discov- 
ering incongruous  regions,  like  Alaska, 
where  they  can  go  and  exercise  their  ju- 
venile exuberance. 

In  many  respects  the  world  has  been 
growing  younger  ever  since  the  Christian 
era.  A  new  spirit  came  into  it  then  which 
makes  youth  perpetual,  a  spirit  of  living 
in  others,  which  got  the  name  of  univer- 
sal brotherhood,  a  spirit  that  has  had  a 
good  many  discouragements  and  set- 
backs, but  which,  on  the  whole,  gains 
ground,  and  generally  works  in  liarmony 
with  the  scientific  spirit,  breaking  down 
the  exclusive  character  of  the  conquests 
of  nature.  What  used  to  be  the  mystery 
and  occultism  of  the  few  is  now  general 


76 


knowledge,  so  that  all  the  playing  at  oc- 
cultism by  conceited  people  now  seems 
jejune  and  foolish.  A  little  machine  called 
the  instantaneous  photograph  takes  pict- 
ures as  quickly  and  accurately  as  the  hu- 
man eye  does,  and  besides  makes  them 
permanent.  Instead  of  fooling  credulous 
multitudes  with  responses  from  Delphi, 
we  have  a  Congress  which  can  enact 
tariff  regulations  susceptible  of  interpre- 
tations enough  to  satisfy  the  love  of  mys- 
tery of  the  entire  nation.  Instead  of  loaf- 
ing round  Memnon  at  sunrise  to  catch 
some  supernatural  tones,  we  talk  words 
into  a  little  contrivance  which  will  repeat 
our  words  and  tones  to  the  remotest  gen- 
eration of  those  who  shall  be  curious  to 
know  whether  we  said  those  words  in  jest 
or  earnest.  All  these  mysteries  made 
common  and  diffused  certainly  increase 
the  feeling  of  the  equality  of  opportunity 
in  the  world.  And  day  by  day  such  won- 
derful things  are  discovered  and  scattered 
aboad  that  we  are  warranted  in  believing 
that  we  are  only  on  the  threshold  of  turn- 
ing to  account  the  hidden  forces  of  nat- 
ure.     There  would   be  great  danger  of 


human  presumption  ana  conceit  in  tliis 
progress  if  the  conceit  were  not  so  wide- 
ly diffused,  and  where  we  are  all  con- 
ceited there  is  no  one  to  whom  it  will  ap- 
pear unpleasant.  If  there  was  only  one 
person  who  knew  about  the  telephone  he 
would  be  unbearable.  Probably  the  EifTel 
Tower  would  be  stricken  down  as  a  mon- 
umental presumption,  like  that  of  Babel, 
if  it  had  not  been  raised  with  the  full 
knowledge  and  consent  of  all  the  world. 

This  new  spirit,  with  its  multiform  man- 
ifestations, which  came  into  the  world 
nearly  nineteen  hundred  years  ago,  is 
sometimes  called  the  spirit  of  Christmas. 
And  good  reasons  can  be  given  for  sup- 
posing that  it  is.  At  any  rate,  those  na- 
tions that  have  the  most  of  it  are  the  most 
prosperous,  and  those  people  who  have 
the  most  of  it  are  the  most  agreeable  to 
associate  with.  Know  all  men  by  these 
Presents,  is  an  old  legal  form  which  has 
come  to  have  a  new  meaning  in  this  dis- 
pensation. It  is  by  the  spirit  of  brother- 
hood exhibited  in  giving  presents  that  we 
know  the  Christmas  proper,  only  we  are 
apt  to  take  it  in  too  narrow  a  way.     The 


78 


real  spirit  of  Christmas  is  the  general  dif- 
fusion of  helpfulness  and  good-will.  If 
somebody  were  to  discover  an  elixir  whicii 
would  make  every  one  truthful,  he  would 
not,  in  this  age  of  the  world,  patent  it. 
Indeed,  the  Patent  Office  would  not  let 
him  make  a  corner  on  virtue  as  he  does 
in  wheat;  and  it  is  not  respectable  any 
more  among  the  real  children  of  Christ- 
mas to  make  a  corner  in  wheat.  The 
world,  to  be  sure,  tolerates  still  a  great 
many  things  that  it  does  not  approve  of, 
and,  on  the  whole,  Christmas,  as  an  amel- 
iorating and  good-fellowship  institution, 
gains  a  little  year  by  year.  There  is  still 
one  hitch  about  it,  and  a  bad  one  just  now, 
namely,  that  many  people  think  they  can 
buy  its  spirit  by  jerks  of  liberality,  by  cost- 
ly gifts.  Whereas  the  fact  is  that  a  great 
many  of  the  costliest  gifts  in  this  season 
do  not  count  at  all.  Crumbs  from  the  rich 
man's  table  don't  avail  any  more  to  open 
the  pearly  gates  even  of  popular  esteem  in 
this  world.  Let  us  say,  in  fine,  that  a  lov- 
ing, sympathetic  heart  is  better  than  a 
nickel-plated  sarvice  in  this  world,  which 
is  surely  growing  young  and  sympathetic. 


N  Autumn  the  thoughts  lightly  turn 
to  Age.  If  the  writer  has  seemed  to 
be  interested,  sometimes  to  the  neglect 
of  other  topics  in  the  American  young 
woman,  it  was  not  because  she  is  inter- 
ested in  herself,  but  because  she  is  on 
the  way  to  be  one  of  the  most  agreeable 
objects  in  this  lovely  world.  She  may 
struggle  against  it;  she  may  resist  it  by 
all  the  legitimate  arts  of  the  coquette  and 
the  chemist ;  she  may  be  convinced  that 
youth  and  beauty  are  inseparable  allies ; 
but  she  would  have  more  patience  if  she 
reflected  that  the  sunset  is  often  finer 
than  the  sunrise,  commonly  finer  than 
noon,  especially  after  a  stormy  day.  The 
secret  of  a  beautiful  old  age  is  as  well 
worth  seeking  as  that  of  a  charming 
young  maidenhood.  For  it  is  one  of  the 
compensations  for  the  rest  of  us,  in  the 
decay  of  this  mortal  life,  that  women, 


whose  mission  it  is  to  allure  in  j'outh 
and  to  tinge  the  beginning  of  the  world 
with  romance,  also  make  the  end  of  the 
world  more  serenely  satisfactory  and 
beautiful  than  the  outset.  And  this  has 
been  done  without  any  amendment  to 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  ; 
in  fact,  it  is  possible  that  the  Sixteenth 
Amendment  would  rather  hinder  than 
help  this  gracious  process.  We  are  not 
speaking  now  of  what  is  called  growing 
old  gracefully  and  regretfully,  as  some- 
thing to  be  endured,  but  as  a  season  to 
be  desired  for  itself,  at  least  by  those 
whose  privilege  it  is  to  be  ennobled  and 
cheered  by  it.  And  we  are  not  speaking 
of  wicked  old  women.  There  is  a  unique 
fascination  —  all  the  novelists  recognize 
it  —  in  a  wicked  old  woman;  not  very 
wicked,  but  a  woman  of  abundant  exper- 
ience, who  is  perfectly  frank  and  a  little 
cynical,  and  delights  in  probing  human 
nature  and  flashing  her  wit  on  its  weak- 
nesses, and  who  knows  as  much  about  life 
as  a  club  man  is  credited  with  knowing. 
She  may  not  be  a  good  comrade  for  the 
young,  but  she  is  immensely  more  fas- 


cinating  than  a  scmi-wickcd  old  man. 
Why,  we  do  not  know  ;  that  is  one  of  the 
unfathomable  mysteries  of  womanhood. 
No ;  we  have  in  mind  quite  another  sort 
of  woman,  of  which  America  has  so  many 
that  they  are  a  very  noticeable  element 
in  all  cultivated  society.  And  the  world 
has  nothing  more  lovely.  For  there  is  a 
loveliness  or  fascination  sometimes  in 
women  between  the  ages  of  sixty  and 
eighty  that  is  unlike  any  other— a  charm 
that  wooes  us  to  regard  autumn  as  beau- 
tiful as  spring. 

Perhaps  these  women  were  great  beau- 
ties in  their  day,  but  scarcely  so  serenely 
beautiful  as  now  when  age  has  refined 
all  that  was  most  attractive.  Perhaps 
they  were  plain  ;  but  it  does  not  matter, 
for  the  subtle  influence  of  spiritualized 
intelligence  has  the  power  of  transform- 
ing plainness  into  the  beauty  of  old  age. 
Physical  beauty  is  doubtless  a  great  ad- 
vantage, and  it  is  never  lost  if  mind 
shines  through  it  (there  is  nothing  so  un- 
lovely as  a  frivolous  old  woman  fighting 
to  keep  the  skin-deep  beauty  of  her 
youth)  ;    the    eyes,    if   the   life   has   not 


been  one  of  physical  suffering,  usually 
retain  their  power  of  movino  appeal  ; 
the  lines  of  the  face,  if  changed,  may  be 
refined  by  a  certain  spirituality ;  the 
gray  hair  gives  dignity  and  softness  and 
the  charm  of  contrast ;  the  low  sweet 
voice  vibrates  to  the  same  note  of  fem- 
ininity, and  the  graceful  and  gracious  are 
graceful  and  gracious  still.  Even  into 
the  face  and  bearing  of  the  plain  woman 
whose  mind  has  grown,  whose  thoughts 
have  been  pure,  whose  heart  has  been 
expanded  by  good  deeds  or  by  constant 
affection,  comes  a  beauty  winning  and 
satisfactory  in  the  highest  degree. 

It  is  not  that  the  charm  of  the  women 
of  whom  we  speak  is  mainly  this  physical 
beauty ;  that  is  only  incidental,  as  it 
were.  The  delight  in  their  society  has  a 
variety  of  sources.  Their  interest  in 
life  is  broader  than  it  once  was,  more 
sympathetically  unselfish  ;  they  have  a 
certain  philosophical  serenity  that  is  not 
inconsistent  with  great  liveliness  of  mind  ; 
they  have  got  rid  of  so  much  nonsense  j 
they  can  afford  to  be  truthful — and 
how  much  there   is  to  be  learned  from 


a  woman  who  is  truthful  I  they  have 
a  most  delicious  couraj^^e  of  opinion, 
about  men,  say,  and  in  politics,  and  social 
topics,  and  creeds  even.  They  have  very 
little  any  longer  to  conceal  ,  that  is,  in 
regard  to  things  that  should  be  thought 
about  and  talked  about  at  all.  They  are 
not  afraid  to  be  gay,  and  to  have  enthu- 
siasms. At  sixty  and  eighty  a  refined 
and  well-bred  woman  is  emancipated  in 
the  best  way,  and  in  the  enjoyment  of 
the  full  play  of  the  richest  qualities  of  her 
womanhood.  She  is  as  far  from  prudery  as 
from  the  least  note  of  vulgarity.  Passion, 
perhaps,  is  replaced  by  a  great  capacity 
for  friendliness,  and  she  was  never  more  a 
real  woman  than  in  these  mellow  and  re- 
flective days.  And  how  interesting  she  is 
—  adding  so  much  knowledge  of  life  to 
the  complex  interest  that  inheres  in  her 
sex!  Knowledge  of  life,  yes,  and  of  af- 
fairs ;  for  it  must  be  said  of  these  ladies 
we  have  in  mind  that  they  keep  up  with 
the  current  thought,  that  they  are  readers 
of  books,  even  of  newspapers — for  even 
the  newspaper  can  be  helpful  and  not 
harmful  in  the  alembic  of  their  minds. 


84 


Let  not  the  purpose  of  this  paper  be 
misunderstood.  It  is  not  to  urge  young 
women  to  become  old  or  to  act  like  old 
women.  The  independence  and  frank- 
ness of  age  might  not  be  becoming  to 
them.  They  must  stumble  along  as  best 
they  can,  alternately  attracting  and  repel- 
ling, until  by  right  of  years  they  join  that 
serene  company  which  is  altogether  beau- 
tiful. There  is  a  natural  unfolding  and 
maturing  to  the  beauty  of  old  age.  The 
mission  of  woman,  about  which  we  are 
pretty  weary  of  hearing,  is  not  accom- 
plished by  any  means  in  her  years  of  ver- 
nal bloom  and  loveliness ;  she  has  equal 
power  to  bless  and  sweeten  life  in  the 
autumn  of  her  pilgrimage.  But  here  is 
an  apologue :  The  peach,  from  blossom 
to  maturity,  is  the  most  attractive  of 
fruits.  Yet  the  demands  of  the  market, 
competition,  and  fashion  often  cause  it 
to  be  plucked  and  shipped  while  green. 
It  never  matures,  though  it  may  take  a 
deceptive  richness  of  color ;  it  decays 
without  ripening.  And  the  last  end  of 
that  peach  is  worse  than  the  first. 


THE   ATTRACTION   OF 
fljfr  THE    REPULSIVE 

*^'  N  one  of  the  most  charming  of 
the  many  wonderfully  picturesque  little 
beaches  on  the  Pacific  coast,  near  Mon- 
terey, is  the  idlest  if  not  the  most  disagree- 
able social  group  in  the  world.  Just  ofT 
the  shore,  farther  than  a  stone's-throw,  lies 
a  mass  of  broken  rocks.  The  surf  comes 
leaping  and  laughing  in,  sending  up,  above 
the  curving  green  breakers  and  crests  of 
foam,  jets  and  spirals  of  water  which 
flash  like  silver  fountains  in  the  sunlight. 
These  islets  of  rock  are  the  homes  of  the 
sea-lion.  This  loafer  of  the  coast  congre- 
gates here  by  the  thousand.  Sometimes 
the  rocks  are  quite  covered,  the  smooth 
rounded  surface  of  the  larger  one  present- 
ing the  appearance  at  a  distance  of  a 
knoll  dotted  with  dirty  sheep.  There  is 
generally  a  select  knot  of  a  dozen  floating 
about  in  the  still  water  under  the  lee  of 


the  rock,  bobbing  up  their  tails  and  flip- 
pers very  much  as  black  drift-wood  might 
heave  about  in  the  tide.  During  certain 
parts  of  the  day  members  of  this  commu- 
nity are  ofT  fishing  in  deep  water ;  but 
what  they  like  best  to  do  is  to  crawl  up 
on  the  rocks  and  grunt  and  bellow,  or  go 
to  sleep  in  the  sun.  Some  of  them  lie 
half  in  water,  their  tails  floating  and  their 
ungainly  heads  wagging.  These  uneasy 
ones  are  always  wriggling  out  or  plunging 
in.  Some  crawl  to  the  tops  of  the  rocks 
and  lie  like  gunny  bags  stufifed  with  meal, 
or  they  repose  on  the  broken  surfaces  like 
masses  of  jelly.  When  they  are  all  at 
home  the  rocks  have  not  room  for  them, 
and  they  crawl  on  and  over  each  other, 
and  lie  like  piles  of  undressed  pork.  In 
the  water  they  are  black,  but  when  they 
are  dry  in  the  sun  the  skin  becomes  a  dirty 
light  brown.  Many  of  them  are  huge  fel- 
lows, with  a  body  as  big  as  an  ox.  In  the 
water  they  are  repulsively  graceful ;  on 
the  rocks  they  are  as  ungainly  as  boneless 
cows,  or  hogs  that  have  lost  their  shape 
in  prosperity.  Summer  and  winter  (and 
it  is  almost  always  summer  on  this  coast) 


8/ 


these  beasts,  which  are  well  fitted  neither 
for  land  nor  water,  spend  their  time  in 
absolute  indolence,  except  when  they  are 
compelled  to  cruise  around  in  the  deep 
water  for  food.  They  are  of  no  use  to 
anybody,  either  for  their  skin  or  their 
flesh.  Nothing  could  be  more  thoroughly 
disgusting  and  uncanny  than  they  are, 
and  yet  nothing  more  fascinating.  One 
can  watch  them — the  irresponsible,  form- 
less lumps  of  intelligent  flesh— for  hours 
without  tiring.  I  scarcely  know  what  the 
fascination  is.  A  small  seal  playing  by 
himself  near  the  shore,  floating  on  and 
diving  under  the  breakers,  is  not  so  very 
disagreeable,  especially  if  he  comes  so 
near  that  you  can  see  his  pathetic  eyes ; 
but  these  brutes  in  this  perpetual  summer 
resort  are  disgustingly  attractive.  Nearly 
everything  about  them,  including  their 
voice,  is  repulsive.  Perhaps  it  is  the  ab- 
solute idleness  of  the  community  that 
makes  it  so  interesting.  To  fish,  to  swim, 
to  snooze  on  the  rocks,  that  is  all,  for  ever 
and  ever.  No  past,  no  future.  A  society 
that  lives  for  the  laziest  sort  of  pleasure. 
If  they  were  rich,  what  more  could  they 


have  ?    Is  not  this  the  ideal  of  a  watering- 
place  life  ? 

The  spectacle  of  this  happy  community 
ought  to  teach  us  humility  and  charity  in 
judgment.  Perhaps  the  philosophy  of  its 
attractiveness  lies  deeper  than  its  dolce 
far  niente  existence.  We  may  never  have 
considered  the  attraction  for  us  of  the 
disagreeable,  the  positive  fascination  of 
the  uncommonly  ugly.  The  repulsive  fas- 
cination of  the  loathly  serpent  or  dragon 
for  women  can  hardly  be  explained  on 
theological  grounds.  Some  cranks  have 
maintained  that  the  theory  of  gravitation 
alone  does  not  explain  the  universe,  that 
repulsion  is  as  necessary  as  attraction  in 
our  economy.  This  may  apply  to  society. 
We  are  all  charmed  with  the  luxuriance 
of  a  semi-tropical  landscape,  so  violently 
charmed  that  we  become  in  time  tired  of 
its  overpowering  bloom  and  color.  But 
what  is  the  charm  of  the  wide,  treeless 
desert,  the  leagues  of  sand  and  burnt-up 
chaparral,  the  distant  savage,  fantastic 
mountains,  the  dry  desolation  as  of  a 
world  burnt  out  ?  It  is  not  contrast  alto- 
gether.    For  this  illimitable  waste  has  its 


own  charm;  and  again  and  again,  when 
we  come  to  a  world  of  vegetation,  where 
the  vision  is  shut  in  by  beauty,  we  shall 
have  an  irrepressible  longing  for  these 
wind-swept  plains  as  wide  as  the  sea,  with 
the  ashy  and  pink  horizons.  We  shall 
long  to  be  weary  of  it  all  again — its  vast 
nakedness,  its  shimmering  heat,  its  cold, 
star-studded  nights.  It  seems  paradoxi- 
cal, but  it  is  probably  true,  that  a  society 
composed  altogether  of  agreeable  people 
would  become  a  terrible  bore.  We  are  a 
"  kittle  "  lot,  and  hard  to  please  for  long. 
We  know  how  it  is  in  the  matter  of  cli- 
mate. Why  is  it  that  the  masses  of  the 
human  race  live  in  the  most  disagreeable 
climates  to  be  found  on  the  globe,  subject 
to  extremes  of  heat  and  cold,  sudden  and 
unprovoked  changes,  frosts,  fogs,  mala- 
rias.-' In  such  regions  they  congregate, 
and  seem  to  like  the  vicissitudes,  to  like 
the  excitement  of  the  struggle  with  the 
weather  and  the  patent  medicines  to  keep 
alive.  They  hate  the  agreeable  monotony 
of  one  genial  day  following  another  the 
year  through.  They  praise  this  monot- 
ony, all  literature  is  full  of  it;  people  al- 


ways  say  they  are  in  search  of  the  equable 
climate  ;  but  they  continue  to  live,  never- 
theless, or  try  to  live,  in  the  least  equable  ; 
and  if  they  can  find  one  spot  more  dis- 
agreeable than  another  there  they  build  a 
big  city.  If  man  could  make  his  ideal 
climate  he  would  probably  be  dissatisfied 
with  it  in  a  month.  The  elifect  of  climate 
upon  disposition  and  upon  manners  needs 
to  be  considered  some  day ;  but  we  are 
now  only  trying  to  understand  the  attract- 
iveness of  the  disagreeable.  There  must 
be  some  reason  for  it ;  and  that  would  ex- 
plain a  social  phenomenon,  why  there  are 
so  many  unattractive  people,  and  why  the 
attractive  readers  of  these  essays  could 
not  get  on  without  them. 

The  writer  of  this  once  travelled  for 
days  with  an  intelligent  curmudgeon,  who 
made  himself  at  all  points  as  prickly  as 
the  porcupine.  There  was  no  getting  on 
with  him.  And  yet  when  he  dropped  out 
of  the  party  he  was  sorely  missed.  He 
was  more  attractively  repulsive  than  the 
sea-lion.  It  was  such  a  luxury  to  hate 
him.  He  was  such  a  counter-irritant,  such 
a  stimulant ;  such  a  flavor  he  gave  to  life. 


We  are  always  on  the  lookout  for  the  odd. 
the  eccentric,  the  whimsical.  We  pretend 
that  we  like  the  orderly,  the  beautiful,  the 
pleasant.  We  can  find  them  anywhere — 
the  little  bits  of  scenery  that  please  the 
eye,  the  pleasant  households,  the  group 
of  delightful  people.  Why  travel,  then  ? 
We  want  the  abnormal,  the  strong,  the 
ugly,  the  unusual  at  least.  We  wish  to 
be  startled  and  stirred  up  and  repelled. 
And  we  ought  to  be  more  thankful  than 
we  are  that  there  are  so  many  desolate 
and  wearisome  and  fantastic  places,  and 
so  many  tiresome  and  unattractive  peo- 
ple in  this  lovely  world. 


GIVING   AS   A    LUXURY 

There  must  be  something  very  good 
in  human  nature,  or  people  would  not 
experience  so  much  pleasure  in  giving; 
there  must  be  something  very  bad  in 
human  nature,  or  more  people  would  try 
the  experiment  of  giving.  Those  who  do 
try  it  become  enamored  of  it,  and  get  their 
chief  pleasure  in  life  out  of  it ;  and  so 
evident  is  this  that  there  is  some  basis  for 
the  idea  that  it  is  ignorance  rather  than 
badness  which  keeps  so  many  people  from 
being  generous.  Of  course  it  may  be- 
come a  sort  of  dissipation,  or  more  than 


that,  a  devastation,  as  many  men  who 
have  what  are  called  "good  wives  "  have 
reason  to  know,  in  the  gradual  disappear- 
ance of  their  wardrobe  if  they  chance  to 
lay  aside  any  of  it  temporarily.  The 
amount  that  a  good  woman  can  give 
away  is  only  measured  by  her  oppor- 
tunity. Her  mind  becomes  so  trained 
in  the  mystery  of  this  pleasure  that  she 
experiences  no  thrill  of  delight  in  giving 
away  only  the  things  her  husband  does 
not  want.  Her  office  in  life  is  to  teach 
him  the  joy  of  self-sacrifice.  She  and  all 
other  habitual  and  irreclaimable  givers 
soon  find  out  that  there  is  next  to  no 
pleasure  in  a  gift  unless  it  involves  some 
self-denial. 

Let  one  consider  seriously  whether  he 
ever  gets  as  much  satisfaction  out  of  a 
gift  received  as  out  of  one  given.  It 
pleases  him  for  the  moment,  and  if  it  is 
useful,  for  a  long  time;  he  turns  it  over, 
and  admires  it ;  he  may  value  it  as  a 
token  of  affection,  and  it  flatters  his  self- 
esteem  that  he  is  the  object  of  it.  But  it 
is  a  transient  feeling  compared  with  that 
he  has  when  he  has  made  a  gift.     That 


substantially  ministers  to  his  self-esteem. 
He  follows  the  gift ;  he  dwells  upon  the 
delight  of  the  receiver;  his  imagination 
plays  about  it ;  it  will  never  wear  out  or 
become  stale  ;  having  parted  with  it,  it  is 
for  him  a  lasting  possession.  It  is  an 
investment  as  lasting  as  that  in  the  debt 
of  England.  Like  a  good  deed,  it  grows, 
and  is  continually  satisfactory.  It  is 
something  to  think  of  when  he  first 
wakes  in  the  morning— a  time  when  most 
people  are  badly  put  to  it  for  want  of 
something  pleasant  to  think  of.  This 
fact  about  giving  is  so  incontestably  true 
that  it  is  a  wonder  that  enlightened  peo- 
ple do  not  more  freely  indulge  in  giving 
for  their  own  comfort.  It  is,  above  all 
else,  amazing  that  so  many  imagine  they 
are  going  to  get  any  satisfaction  out  of 
what  they  leave  by  will.  They  may  be 
in  a  state  where  they  will  enjoy  it,  if  the 
will  is  not  fought  over;  but  it  is  shocking 
how  little  gratitude  there  is  accorded  to 
a  departed  giver  compared  to  a  living 
giver.  He  couldn't  take  the  property 
with  him,  it  is  said  ;  he  was  obliged  to 
leave  it  to  somebody.     By  this  thought 


95 


his  generosity  is  always  reduced  to  a 
minimum.  He  may  build  a  monument 
to  himself  in  some  institution,  but  we  do 
not  know  enough  of  the  world  to  which 
he  has  gone  to  know  whether  a  tiny 
monument  on  this  earth  is  any  satisfac- 
tion to  a  person  who  is  free  of  the  uni- 
verse. Whereas  every  giving  or  deed  of 
real  humanity  done  while  he  was  living 
would  have  entered  into  his  character, 
and  would  be  of  lasting  service  to  him — 
that  is,  in  any  future  which  we  can  con- 
ceive. 

Of  course  we  are  not  confining  our  re- 
marks to  what  are  called  Christmas  gifts 
• — commercially  so  called — nor  would  we 
undertake  to  estimate  the  pleasure  there 
is  in  either  receiving  or  giving  these.  The 
shrewd  manufacturers  of  the  world  have 
taken  notice  of  the  periodic  generosity 
of  the  race,  and  ingeniously  produce  ar- 
ticles to  serve  it,  that  is,  to  anticipate  the 
taste  and  to  thwart  all  individuality  or 
spontaneity  in  it.  There  is,  in  short, 
what  is  called  a  "line  of  holiday  goods," 
fitting,  it  may  be  supposed,  the  periodic 
line  of  charity.     When  a  person  receives 


96 


some  of  these  things  in  the  blessed  sea- 
son of  such,  he  is  apt  to  be  puzzled.  He 
wants  to  know  what  they  are  for,  what  he 
is  to  do  with  them.  If  there  are  no 
"directions"  on  the  articles,  his  gratitude 
is  somewhat  tempered.  He  has  seen 
these  nondescripts  of  ingenuity  and  ex- 
pense in  the  shop  windows,  but  he  never 
expected  to  come  into  personal  relations 
to  them.  He  is  puzzled,  and  he  cannot 
escape  the  unpleasant  feeling  that  com- 
merce has  put  its  profit-making  fingers 
into  Christmas.  Such  a  lot  of  things 
seem  to  be  manufactured  on  purpose  that 
people  may  perform  a  duty  that  is  ex- 
pected of  them  in  the  holidays.  The 
house  is  full  of  these  impossible  things; 
they  occupy  the  mantel-pieces,  they  stand 
about  on  the  tottering  little  tables,  they 
are  ingenious,  they  are  made  for  wants 
yet  undiscovered,  they  tarnish,  they  break, 
they  will  not  "  work,"  and  pretty  soon 
they  look  "second-hand."  Yet  there 
must  be  more  satisfaction  in  giving  these 
articles  than  in  receiving  them,  and  may- 
be a  spice  of  malice — not  that  of  course, 
for  in  the  holidays  nearly  every  gift  ex- 


presses  at  least  kindly  rcmciubrance — but 
if  you  give  them  you  do  not  have  to  live 
with  them.  But  consider  how  full  the 
world  is  of  holiday  goods — costly  goods 
too  —  that  are  of  no  earthly  use,  and  are 
not  even  artistic,  and  how  short  life  is,  and 
how  many  people  actually  need  books  and 
other  indispensable  articles,  and  how 
starved  are  many  fine  drawing-rooms, 
not  for  holiday  goods,  but  for  objects  of 
beauty. 

Christmas  stands  for  much,  and  for 
more  and  more  in  a  world  that  is  break- 
ing down  its  barriers  of  race  and  religious 
intolerance,  and  one  of  its  chief  offices 
has  been  supposed  to  be  the  teaching  of 
men  the  pleasure  there  is  in  getting  rid 
of  some  of  their  possessions  for  the  bene- 
fit of  others.  But  this  frittering  away  a 
good  instinct  and  tendency  in  conven- 
tional giving  of  manufactures  made  to 
suit  an  artificial  condition  is  hardly  in 
the  line  of  developing  the  spirit  that 
shares  the  last  crust  or  gives  to  the  thirsty 
companion  in  the  desert  the  first  pull  at 
the  canteen.  Of  course  Christmas  feeling 
is  the  life  of  trade  and  all  that,  and  we  will 

7 


98 


be  the  last  to  discourage  any  sort  of  giv- 
ing, for  one  can  scarcely  disencumber 
himself  of  anything  in  his  passage  through 
this  world  and  not  be  benefited  ;  but  the 
hint  may  not  be  thrown  away  that  one 
will  personally  get  more  satisfaction  out 
of  his  periodic  or  continual  benevolence 
if  he  gives  during  his  life  the  things  which 
he  wants  and  other  people  need,  and 
reserves  for  a  fine  show  in  his  will  a  col- 
lected but  not  selected  mass  of  holiday 
goods. 


CLIMATE   AND    HAPPINESS 

The  idea  of  the  relation  of  climate  to 
happiness  is  modern.  It  is  probably  born 
of  the  telegraph  and  of  the  possibility  of 
rapid  travel,  and  it  is  more  disturbing  to 
serenity  of  mind  than  any  other.  Provi- 
dence had  so  ordered  it  that  if  we  sat 
still  in  almost  any  region  of  the  globe 
except  the  tropics,  we  would  have,  in 
course  of  the  year,  almost  all  the  kinds 
of  climate  that  exist.  The  ancient  soci- 
eties did  not  trouble  themselves  about 


the  matter;  they  froze  or  thawed,  were 
hot  or  cold,  as  it  pleased  the  gods.  They 
did  not  think  of  fleeing  from  winter  any 
more  than  from  the  summer  solstice,  and 
consequently  they  enjoyed  a  certain  con- 
tentment of  mind  that  is  absent  from 
modern  life.  We  are  more  intelligent, 
and  therefore  more  discontented  and  un- 
happy. We  are  always  trying  to  escape 
winter  when  we  are  not  trying  to  escape 
summer.  We  are  half  the  time  in  transitu, 
flying  hither  and  thither,  craving  that 
exact  adaptation  of  the  weather  to  our 
whimsical  bodies  promised  only  to  the 
saints  who  seek  a  "better  country."  There 
are  places,  to  be  sure,  where  nature  is  in 
a  sort  of  equilibrium,  but  usually  those 
are  places  where  we  can  neither  make 
money  nor  spend  it  to  our  satisfaction. 
They  lack  either  any  stimulus  to  ambition 
or  a  historic  association,  and  we  soon  find 
that  the  mind  insists  upon  being  cared 
for  quite  as  much  as  the  body. 

How  many  wanderers  in  the  past  winter 
left  comfortable  homes  in  the  United 
States  to  seek  a  mild  climate  !  Did  they 
find  it  in  the  sleet  and  bone-piercing  cold 


of  Paris,  or  anywhere  in  France,  where 
the  wolves  were  forced  to  come  into  the 
villages  in  the  hope  of  picking  up  a  ten- 
der child  ?  If  they  travelled  farther,  were 
the  railway  carriages  anything  but  re- 
frigerators tempered  by  cans  of  cooling 
water?  Was  there  a  place  in  Europe, 
from  Spain  to  Greece,  where  the  Amer- 
ican could  once  be  warm — really  warm 
without  effort — in  or  out  of  doors  ?  Was 
it  any  better  in  divine  Florence  than  on 
the  chill  Riviera  ?  Northern  Italy  was 
blanketed  with  snow,  the  Apennines  were 
white,  and  through  the  clean  streets  of  the 
beautiful  town  a  raw  wind  searched  every 
nook  and  corner,  penetrating  through  the 
thickest  of  English  wraps,  and  harder  to 
endure  than  ingratitude,  while  a  frosty 
mist  enveloped  all.  The  traveller  forgot 
to  bring  with  him  the  contented  mind  of 
the  Italian.  Could  he  go  about  in  a  long 
cloak  and  a  slouch  hat,  curl  up  in  door- 
ways out  -oi  the  blast,  and  be  content  in  a 
feeling  of  his  own  picturesqueness  ?  Could 
he  sit  all  day  on  the  stone  pavement  and 
hold  out  his  chilblained  hand  for  soldi? 
Could  he  even  deceive  himself,  in  a  pala- 


tial  apartment  with  a  frescoed  ceiling,  by 
an  appearance  of  warmth  in  two  sticks 
ignited  by  a  pine  cone  set  in  an  aperture 
in  one  end  of  the  vast  room,  and  giving 
out  scarcely  heat  enough  to  drive  the 
swallows  from  the  chimney  ?  One  must 
be  born  to  this  sort  of  thing  in  order  to 
enjoy  it.  He  needs  the  poetic  tempera- 
ment which  can  feel  in  January  the  breath 
of  June.  The  pampered  American  is  not 
adapted  to  this  kind  of  pleasure.  He  is 
very  crude,  not  to  say  barbarous,  yet  in 
many  of  his  tastes,  but  he  has  reached 
one  of  the  desirable  things  in  civilization, 
and  that  is  a  thorough  appreciation  of 
physical  comfort.  He  has  had  the  ingenu- 
ity to  protect  himself  in  his  own  climate, 
but  when  he  travels  he  is  at  the  mercy  of 
customs  and  traditions  in  which  the  idea 
of  physical  comfort  is  still  rudimentary. 
He  cannot  warm  himself  before  a  group 
of  statuary,  or  extract  heat  from  a  canvas 
by  Raphael,  nor  keep  his  teeth  from  chat- 
tering by  the  exquisite  view  from  the 
Boboli  Gardens.  The  cold  American  is 
insensible  to  art,  and  shivers  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  warmest  historical  associa- 


tions.  It  is  doubtful  if  there  is  a  spot  in 
Europe  where  he  can  be  ordinarily  warm 
in  winter.  The  world,  indeed,  does  not 
care  whether  he  is  warm  or  not,  but  it  is 
a  matter  of  great  importance  to  him.  As 
he  wanders  from  palace  to  palace — and  he 
cannot  escape  the  impression  that  nothing 
is  good  enoui>;h  for  him  except  a  palace — 
he  cannot  think  of  any  cottage  in  any  ham- 
let in  America  that  is  not  more  comfort- 
able in  winter  than  any  palace  he  can  find. 
And  so  he  is  driven  on  in  cold  and  weary 
stretches  of  travel  to  dwell  among  the 
French  in  Algeria,  or  with  the  Jews  in 
Tunis,  or  the  Moslems  in  Cairo.  He 
longs  for  warmth  as  the  Crusader  longed 
for  Jerusalem,  but  not  short  of  Africa 
shall  he  find  it.  The  glacial  period  is 
coming  back  on  Europe. 

The  citizens  of  the  great  republic  have 
a  reputation  for  inordinate  self-apprecia- 
tion, but  we  are  thinking  that  they  under- 
value many  of  the  advantages  their  in- 
genuity has  won.  It  is  admitted  that 
they  are  restless,  and  must  always  be 
seeking  something  that  they  have  not  at 
home.     But  aside  from  their  ability  to  be 


warm  in  any  part  of  their  own  country  at 
any  time  of  the  year,  where  else  can  they 
travel  three  thousand  miles  on  a  stretch 
in  a  well-heated — too  much  heated — car, 
without  change  of  car,  without  revision 
of  tickets,  without  encountering  a  custom- 
house, without  the  necessity  of  stepping 
out-doors  either  for  food  or  drink,  for  a 
library,  for  a  bath— for  any  item,  in  short, 
that  goes  to  the  comfort  of  a  civilized 
being  ?  And  yet  we  are  always  prating 
of  the  superior  civilization  of  Europe. 
Nay,  more,  the  traveller  steps  into  a  car 
— which  is  as  comfortable  as  a  house — in 
Boston,  and  alights  from  it  only  in  the 
City  of  Mexico.  In  what  other  part  of 
the  world  can  that  achievement  in  com- 
fort and  convenience  be  approached  ? 

But  this  is  not  all  as  to  climate  and 
comfort.  We  have  climates  of  all  sorts 
within  easy  reach,  and  in  quantity,  both 
good  and  bad,  enough  to  export — more 
in  fact,  than  we  need  of  all  sorts.  If  heat 
is  all  we  want,  there  are  only  three  or 
four  days  between  the  zero  of  Maine 
and  the  80°  of  Florida.  If  New  England 
is  inhospitable  and  New  York  freezing,  it 


is  only  a  matter  of  four  days  to  the  sun 
and  the  exhilarating  air  of  New  Mexico 
and  Arizona,  and  only  five  to  the  oranges 
and  roses  of  that  semi-tropical  kingdom 
by  the  sea,  Southern  California.  And  if 
this  does  not  content  us,  a  day  or  two 
more  lands  us,  without  sea- sickness,  in 
the  land  of  the  Aztecs,  where  we  can  live 
in  the  temperate  or  the  tropic  zone,  eat 
strange  fruits,  and  be  reminded  of  Egypt 
and  Spain  and  Italy,  and  see  all  the  colors 
that  the  ingenuity  of  man  has  been  able 
to  give  his  skin.  Fruits  and  flowers  and 
sun  in  the  winter-time,  a  climate  to  lounge 
and  be  happy  in — all  this  is  within  easy 
reach,  with  the  minimum  of  disturbance 
to  our  daily  habits.  We  started  out,  when 
we  turned  our  backs  on  the  Old  World, 
with  the  declaration  that  all  men  are  free, 
and  entitled  to  life,  liberty,  and  the  pur- 
suit of  an  agreeable  climate.  We  have 
yet  to  learn,  it  seems,  that  we  can  indulge 
in  that  pursuit  best  on  our  own  continent. 
There  is  no  winter  climate  elsewhere  to 
compare  with  that  found  in  our  extreme 
Southwest  or  in  Mexico,  and  the  sooner 
we  put  this  fact  into  poetry  and  litera- 


io8 


ture,  and  begin  to  make  a  tradition  of  it, 
the  better  will  it  be  for  our  peace  of  mind 
and  for  our  children.  And  if  the  con- 
tinent does  not  satisfy  us,  there  lie  the 
West  Indies  within  a  few  hours'  sail,  with 
all  the  luxuriance  and  geniality  of  the 
tropics.  We  are  only  half  emancipated 
yet.  We  are  still  apt  to  see  the  world 
through  the  imagination  of  England, 
whose  literature  we  adopted,  or  of  Ger- 
many. To  these  bleak  lands  Italy  was  a 
paradise,  and  was  so  sung  by  poets  who 
had  no  conception  of  a  winter  without 
frost.  We  have  a  winter  climate  of  an- 
other sort  from  any  in  Europe ;  we  have 
easy  and  comfortable  access  to  it.  The 
only  thing  we  need  to  do  now  is  to  cor- 
rect our  imagination,  which  has  been  led 
astray.  Our  poets  can  at  least  do  this 
for  us  by  the  help  of  a  quasi-international 
copyright. 


THE   NEW    FEMININE    RESERVE 

In  times  past  there  have  been  expressed 
desire  and  fear  that  there  should  be  an 
American  aristocracy,  and  the  materials 
for  its  formation  have  been  a  good  deal 
canvassed.  In  a  political  point  of  view- 
it  is  of  course  impossible,  but  it  has  been 
hoped  by  many,  and  feared  by  more,  that 
a  social  state  might  be  created  conform- 
ing somewhat  to  the  social  order  in  Eu- 
ropean countries.  The  problem  has  been 
exceedingly  difficult.  An  aristocracy  of 
derived  rank  and  inherited  privilege  be- 
ing out  of  the  question,  and  an  aris- 
tocracy of  talent  never  having  succeeded 
anywhere,  because  enlightenment  of  mind 
tends  to  liberalism  and  democracy,  there 
was  only  left  the  experiment  of  an  aris- 
tocracy of  wealth.  This  does  very  well 
for  a  time,  but  it  tends  always  to  disin- 
tegration, and  it  is  impossible  to  keep  it 
exclusive.     It  was  found,  to  use  the  slang 


of  the  dry-goods  shops,  that  it  would  not 
wash,  for  there  were  Hable  to  crowd  into 
it  at  any  moment  those  who  had  in  fact 
washed  for  a  living.  An  aristocracy  has 
a  slim  tenure  that  cannot  protect  itself 
from  this  sort  of  intrusion.  We  have  to 
contrive,  therefore,  another  basis  for  a 
class  (to  use  an  un-American  expression), 
in  a  sort  of  culture  or  training,  which  can 
be  perpetual,  and  which  cannot  be  or- 
dered for  money,  like  a  ball  costume  or  a 
livery. 

Perhaps  the  "  American  Girl  "  may  be 
the  agency  to  bring  this  about.  This 
charming  product  of  the  Western  world 
has  come  into  great  prominence  of  late 
years  in  literature  and  in  foreign  life,  and 
has  attained  a  notoriety  flattering  or 
otherwise  to  the  national  pride.  No  in- 
stitution has  been  better  known  or  more 
marked  on  the  Continent  and  in  Eng- 
land, not  excepting  the  tramway  and  the 
Pullman  cars.  Her  enterprise,  her  daring, 
her  freedom  from  conventionality,  have 
been  the  theme  of  the  novelists  and  the 
horror  of  the  dowagers  having  marriage- 
able daughters.     Considered  as  "stock," 


'll'''i'i'flt  ,,,       '■    r,  ^   i"^'"^. 


the  American  Girl  has  been  quoted  hi_i;h, 
and  the  alliances  that  she  has  formed  with 
families  impecunious  but  noble  have  given 
her  eclat  as  belonging  to  a  new  and  con- 
quering race  in  the  world.  But  the  Amer- 
ican Girl  has  not  simply  a  slender  figure 
and  a  fine  eye  and  a  ready  tongue,  she  is 
not  simply  an  engaging  and  companion- 
able person,  she  has  excellent  common- 
sense,  tact,  and  adaptability.  She  has  at 
length  seen  in  her  varied  European  ex- 
perience that  it  is  more  profitable  to  have 
social  good  form  according  to  local  stand- 
ards than  a  reputation  for  dash  and  brill- 
iancy. Consequently  the  American  Girl 
of  a  decade  ago  has  efifaced  herself.  She 
is  no  longer  the  dazzling  courageous  fig- 
ure. In  England,  in  France,  in  Germany, 
in  Italy,  she  takes,  as  one  may  say,  the 
color  of  the  land.  She  has  retired  behind 
her  mother.  She  who  formerly  marched 
in  the  van  of  the  family  procession,  lead- 
ing them — including  the  panting  mother 
— a  whimsical  dance,  is  now  the  timid 
and  retiring  girl,  needing  the  protection 
of  a  chaperon  on  every  occasion.  The 
satirist  will  fmd  no  more  abroad  the  Amer- 


icari  Girl  of  the  old  type  whom  he  con- 
tinues to  describe.  The  knowing  and 
fascinating  creature  has  changed  her 
tactics  altogether.  And  the  change  has 
reacted  on  American  society.  The  mother 
has  come  once  more  to  the  front,  and  even 
if  she  is  obliged  to  own  to  forty-five  years 
to  the  census-taker,  she  has  again  the 
position  and  the  privileges  of  the  bloom- 
ing woman  of  thirty.  Her  daughters 
walk  meekly  and  with  downcast  (if  still 
expectant)  eyes,  and  wait  for  a  sign. 

That  this  change  is  the  deliberate  work 
of  the  American  Girl,  no  one  who  knows 
her  grace  and  talent  will  deny.  In  foreign 
travel  and  residence  she  has  been  quick 
to  learn  her  lesson.  Dazzled  at  first  by 
her  own  capacity  and  the  opportunities 
of  the  foreign  field,  she  took  the  situation 
by  storm.  But  she  found  too  often  that 
she  had  a  barren  conquest,  and  that  the 
social  traditions  survived  her  success  and 
became  a  life-long  annoyance  ;  that  is  to 
say,  it  was  possible  to  subdue  foreign 
men,  but  the  foreign  women  were  impreg- 
nable in  their  social  order.  The  Amer- 
ican Girl  abroad   is  now,  therefore,  with 


rare  exceptions,  as  carefully  chaperoned 
and  secluded  as  her  foreign  sisters. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  lay  too  much 
stress  upon  this  phase  of  American  life 
abroad,  but  the  careful  observer  must 
notice  its  reflex  action  at  home.  The 
American  freedom  and  unconventionality 
in  the  intercourse  of  the  young  of  both 
sexes,  which  has  been  so  much  com- 
mented on  as  characteristic  of  American 
life,  may  not  disappear,  but  that  small 
section  which  calls  itself  "  society  "  may 
attain  a  sort  of  aristocratic  distinction  by 
the  adoption  of  this  foreign  convention- 
ality. It  is  sufficient  now  to  note  this 
tendency,  and  to  claim  the  credit  of  it  for 
the  wise  and  intelligent  American  Girl. 
It  would  be  a  pity  if  it  were  to  become 
nationally  universal,  for  then  it  would 
not  be  the  aristocratic  distinction  of  a 
few,  and  the  American  woman  who  longs 
for  some  sort  of  caste  would  be  driven  to 
some  other  device. 

It  is  impossible  to  tell  yet  what  form 
this  feminine  reserve  and  retirement  will 
take.  It  is  not  at  all  likely  to  go  so  far 
as  the  Oriental  seclusion  of  women.   The 


American  Girl  would  never  even  seem- 
ingly give  up  her  right  of  initiative.  If 
she  is  to  stay  in  the  background  and  pre- 
tend to  surrender  her  choice  to  her  par- 
ents, and  with  it  all  the  delights  of  a 
matrimonial  campaign,  she  will  still  main- 
tain a  position  of  observation.  If  she 
seems  to  be  influenced  at  present  by  the 
French  and  Italian  examples,  we  may  be 
sure  that  she  is  too  intelligent  and  too 
fond  of  freedom  to  long  tolerate  any 
system  of  chaperonage  that  she  cannot 
control.  She  will  find  a  way  to  modify 
the  traditional  conventionalities  so  as  not 
to  fetter  her  own  free  spirit.  It  may  be 
her  misson  to  show  the  world  a  social 
order  free  from  the  forward  independence 
and  smartness  of  which  she  has  been  ac- 
cused, and  yet  relieved  of  the  dull  stifif- 
ness  of  the  older  forms.  It  is  enough 
now  to  notice  that  a  change  is  going  on, 
due  to  the  effect  of  foreign  society  upon 
American  women,  and  to  express  the 
patriotic  belief  that  whatever  forms  of 
etiquette  she  may  bow  to,  the  American 
Girl  will  still  be  on  earth  the  last  and 
best  gift  of  God  to  man. 


REPOSE    IN    ACTIVITY 

What  wc  want  is  repose.  We  take  in- 
finite trouble  and  go  to  the  ends  of  the 
world  to  get  it.  That  is  what  makes  us 
all  so  restless.  If  we  could  only  find  a 
spot  where  we  could  sit  down,  content  to 
let  the  world  go  by,  away  from  the  Sun- 
day newspapers  and  the  chronicles  of  an 
uneasy  society,  we  think  we  should  be 
happy.  Perhaps  such  a  place  is  Corona- 
do  Beach — that  semitropical  flower-gar- 
den by  the  sea.  Perhaps  another  is  the 
Timeo  Terrace  at  Taormina.  There,  with- 
out moving,  one  has  the  most  exquisite 
sea  and  shore  far  below  him,  so  far  that 
he  has  the  feeling  of  domination  without 
effort ;  the  most  picturesque  crags  and 
castle  peaks;  he  has  all  classic  legend  un- 
der his  eye  without  the  trouble  of  reading, 
and  mediaeval  romance  as  well ;  ruins 
from  the  time  of  Theocritus  to  Freeman, 
with  no  responsibility  of  describing  them  ; 


and  one  of  the  loveliest  and  most  majes- 
tic of  snow  mountains,  never  twice  the 
same  in  light  and  shade,  entirely  revealed 
and  satisfactory  from  base  to  summit, 
with  no  self  or  otherwise  imposed  duty 
of  climbing  it.  Here  are  most  of  the  ele- 
ments of  peace  and  calm  spirit.  And  the 
town  itself  is  quite  dead,  utterly  ex- 
hausted after  a  turbulent  struggle  of 
twenty -five  hundred  years,  its  poor  in- 
habitants living  along  only  from  habit. 
The  only  new  things  in  it — the  two  cara- 
vansaries of  the  traveller — are  a  hotel  and 
a  cemetery.  One  might  end  his  days 
here  in  serene  retrospection,  and  more 
cheaply  than  in  other  places  of  fewer  at- 
tractions, for  it  is  all  Past  and  no  Future. 
Probably,  therefore,  it  would  not  suit  the 
American,  whose  imagination  does  not 
work  so  easily  backward  as  forward,  and 
who  prefers  to  build  his  own  nest  rather 
than  settle  in  anybody  else's  rookery. 

Perhaps  the  American  deceives  himself 
when  he  says  he  wants  repose ;  what  he 
wants  is  perpetual  activity  and  change ; 
his  peace  of  mind  is  postponed  until  he 
can  get  it  in  his  own  way.    It  is  in  feeling 


that  he  is  a  part  of  p;rowth  and  not  of  de- 
cay. Foreigners  are  fond  of  writing  essays 
upon  American  traits  and  characteristics. 
They  touch  mostly  on  surface  indica- 
tions. What  really  distinguishes  the 
American  from  all  others— for  all  peoples 
like  more  or  less  to  roam,  and  the  English 
of  all  others  are  globe-trotters — is  not  so 
much  his  restlessness  as  his  entire  accord 
with  the  spirit  of  "go-ahead,"  the  result 
of  his  absolute  breaking  with  the  Past. 
He  can  repose  only  in  the  midst  of  in- 
tense activity.  He  can  sit  down  quietly 
in  a  town  that  is  growing  rapidly;  but  if 
it  stands  still,  he  is  impelled  to  move  his 
rocking-chair  to  one  more  lively.  He 
wants  the  world  to  move,  and  to  move 
unencumbered  ;  and  Europe  seems  to  him 
to  carry  too  much  baggage.  The  Amer- 
ican is  simply  the  most  modern  of  men, 
one  who  has  thrown  away  the  impedi- 
menta of  tradition.  The  world  never  saw 
such  a  spectacle  before,  so  vast  a  territory 
informed  with  one  uniform  spirit  of  en- 
ergy and  progress,  and  people  tumbling 
into  it  from  all  the  world,  eager  for  the 
fair  field  and  free  opportunity.  The  Amer- 


ican  delights  in  it;  in  Europe  he  misses 
the  swing  and  "go  "  of  the  new  hfe. 

This  large  explanation  may  not  account 
for  the  summer  restlessness  that  over- 
takes nearly  everybody.  We  are  the  an- 
nual victims  of  the  delusion  that  there 
exists  somewhere  the  ideal  spot  where 
manners  are  simple,  and  milk  is  pure,  and 
lodging  is  cheap,  where  we  shall  fall  at 
once  into  content.  We  never  do.  For 
content  consists  not  in  having  all  we 
want,  nor  in  not  wanting  everything,  nor 
in  being  unable  to  get  what  we  want,  but 
in  not  wanting  that  we  can  get.  In  our 
summer  flittings  we  carry  our  wants  with 
us  to  places  where  they  cannot  be  grati- 
fied. A  few  people  have  discovered  that 
repose  can  be  had  at  home,  but  this  dis- 
covery is  too  unfashionable  to  find  favor; 
we  have  no  rest  except  in  moving  about. 

Looked  at  superficially,  it  seems  curi- 
ous that  the  American  is,  as  a  rule,  the 
only  person  who  does  not  emigrate.  The 
fact  is  that  he  can  go  nowhere  else  where 
life  is  so  uneasy,  and  where,  consequently, 
he  would  have  so  little  of  his  sort  of  re- 
pose.    To  put   him   in  another  country 


would  be  like  putting  a  nineteenth-cen- 
tury man  back  into  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. The  American  wants  to  be  at  the 
head  of  the  procession  (as  he  fancies  he 
is),  where  he  can  hear  the  band  play,  and 
be  the  first  to  see  the  fireworks  of  the 
new  era.  He  thinks  that  he  occupies  an 
advanced  station  of  observation,  from 
which  his  telescope  can  sweep  the  hori- 
zon for  anything  new.  And  with  some 
reason  he  thinks  so  ;  for  not  seldom  he 
takes  up  a  foreign  idea  and  tires  of  it  be- 
fore it  is  current  elsewhere.  More  than 
one  great  writer  of  England  had  his  first 
popular  recognition  in  America.  Even 
this  season  the  Satio'day  Review  is  strug- 
gling with  Ibsen,  while  Boston,  having 
had  that  disease,  has  probably  gone  on  to 
some  other  fad. 

Far  be  it  from  us  to  praise  the  Ameri- 
can for  his  lack  of  repos'e  ;  it  is  enough 
to  attempt  to  account  for  it.  But  from 
the  social,  or  rather  society,  point  of  view, 
the  subject  has  a  disquieting  aspect.  If 
the  American  young  man  and  young 
woman  get  it  into  their  heads  that  repose, 
especially  of  manner,  is  the  correct  thing, 


they  wll  go  in  for  it  in  a  way  to  astonish 
the  world.  The  late  cultivation  of  idiocy 
by  the  American  dude  was  unique.  He 
carried  it  to  an  extreme  impossible  to  the 
youth  of  any  nation  less  "gifted."  And 
if  the  American  girl  goes  in  seriously  for 
"  repose,"  she  will  be  able  to  give  odds  to 
any  modern  languidity  or  to  any  ancient 
marble.  If  what  is  wanted  in  society  is 
cold  hauteur  and  languid  superciliousness 
or  lofty  immobility,  we  are  confident  that 
with  a  little  practice  she  can  sit  stiller, 
and  look  more  impassive,  and  move  with 
less  motion,  than  any  other  created  wom- 
an. We  have  that  confidence  in  her  abil- 
ity and  adaptability.  It  is  a  question 
whether  it  is  worth  while  to  do  this ;  to 
sacrifice  the  vivacity  and  charm  native  to 
her,  and  the  natural  impulsivene.ss  and 
generous  gift  of  herself  which  belong  to 
a  new  race  in  a' new  land,  which  is  walk- 
ing always  towards  the  sunrise. 

In  fine,  although  so  much  is  said  of  the 
American  lack  of  repose,  is  it  not  best  for 
the  American  to  be  content  to  be  himself, 
and  let  the  critics  adapt  themselves  or 
not,  as  they  choose,  to  a  new  phenom- 


enon  ?     Let  us  stick  a  philosophic  name 
to  it,  and  call  it  repose  in  activity. 

The  American  might  take  the  candid 
advice  given  by  one  friend  to  another, 
who  complained  that  it  was  so  difficult  to 
get  into  the  right  frame  of  mind.  "  The 
best  thing  you  can  do,"  he  said,  "  is  to 
frame  your  mind  and  hang  it  up." 


WOMEN— IDEAL   AND    REAL 

We  have  not  by  any  means  got  to  the 
bottom  of  Realism.  It  matters  very  little 
what  the  novelists  and  critics  say  about 
it — what  it  is  and  what  it  is  not ;  the  atti- 
tude of  society  towards  it  is  the  important 
thing.  Even  if  the  critic  could  prove 
that  nature  and  art  are  the  same  thing, 
and  that  the  fiction  which  is  Real  is  only 
a  copy  of  nature,  or  if  another  should 
prove  that  Reality  is  only  to  be  found  in 
the  Ideal,  little  would  be  gained.  Liter- 
ature is  well  enough  in  its  place,  art  is  an 
agreeable  pastime,  and  it  is  right  that 
society  should  take  up  either  in  seasons 
when  lawn-tennis  and  polo  are  impracti- 
cable and  afternoon  teas  become  flavor- 
less ;  but  the  question  that  society  is  or 
should  be  interested  in  is  whether  the 
young  woman  of  the  future — upon  whose 
formation  all  our  social  hopes  depend — 
is  going  to  shape  herself  by  a  Realistic 


or  an  Ideal 
standard.  It 
should  be 
said  in  paren- 
thesis that 
the  young 
woman  of  the 
passing  peri- 
od has  inclined  towards  Realism  in  man- 
ner and  speech,  if  not  in  dress,  affecting 
a  sort  of  frank,  return  to  the  easy- 
going ways  of  nature  itself,  even  to  the 
adoption  of  the  language  of  the  stock 
exchange,  the  race-course,  and  the  clubs 
— an  offering  of  herself  on  the  altar  of 
good-fellowship,  with  the  view,  no  doubt, 
of    making    life    more  agreeable   to   the 


opposite  sex,  forgetting  the  fact  that  men 
fall  in  love  always,  or  used  to  in  the  days 
when  they  could  afford  that  luxury,  with 
an  ideal  woman,  or  if  not  with  an  ideal 
woman,  with  one  whom  they  idealize. 
And  at  this  same  time  the  world  is  full  of 
doubts  and  questionings  as  to  whether 
marriage  is  a  failure.  Have  these  ques- 
tionings anything  to  do  with  the  increas- 
ing Realism  of  women,  and  a  consequent 
loss  of  ideals  ? 

Of  course  the  reader  sees  that  the 
difficulty  in  considering  this  subject  is 
whether  woman  is  to  be  estimated  as  a 
work  of  nature  or  of  art.  And  here 
comes  in  the  everlasting  question  of  what 
is  the  highest  beauty,  and  what  is  most  to 
be  desired.  The  Greek  artists,  it  seems  to 
be  well  established,  never  used  a  model, 
as  our  artists  almost  invariably  do,  in 
their  plastic  and  pictorial  creations.  The 
antique  Greek  statues,  or  their  copies, 
which  give  us  the  highest  conceptions  of 
feminine  charm  and  manly  beauty,  were 
made  after  no  woman,  or  man  born  of 
woman,  but  were  creations  of  the  ideal 
raised  to  the  highest  conception  by  the 


passionate  lov'c  and  long  study  of  nature, 
but  never  by  faithful  copying  of  it.  The 
Romans  copied  the  Greek  art.  The 
Greek  in  his  best  days  created  the  ideal 
figure,  which  we  love  to  accept  as  nature. 
Generation  after  generation  the  Greek 
learned  to  draw  and  learned  to  observe, 
until  he  was  able  to  transmute  his  knowl- 
edge into  the  forms  of  grace  and  beauty 
which  satisfy  us  as  nature  at  her  best ; 
just  as  the  novelist  trains  all  his  powers 
by  the  observation  of  life  until  he  is  able 
to  transmute  all  the  raw  material  into  a 
creation  of  fiction  which  satisfies  us.  We 
may  be  sure  that  if  the  Greek  artist  had 
employed  the  service  of  models  in  his 
studio,  his  art  would  have  been  merely  a 
passing  phase  in  human  history.  But  as 
it  is,  the  world  has  ever  since  been  in  love 
with  his  ideal  woman,  and  still  believes  in 
her  possibility. 

Now  the  young  woman  of  to-day  should 
not  be  deceived  into  the  notion  of  a  pref- 
erable Realistic  development  because  the 
novelist  of  to-day  gets  her  to  sit  to  him 
as  his  model.  This  may  be  no  certain  in- 
dication that  she   is  either  good  art  or 

9 


good  nature.  Indeed  she  may  be  quite 
drifting  away  from  the  ideal  that  a  woman 
ought  to  aim  at  if  we  are  to  have  a  society 
that  is  not  always  tending  into  a  realistic 
vulgarity  and  commonplace.  It  is  per- 
fectly true  that  a  woman  is  her  own  ex- 
cuse for  being,  and  in  a  way  she  is  doing 
enough  for  the  world  by  simply  being  a 
woman.  It  is  difficult  to  rouse  her  to 
any  sense  of  her  duty  as  a  standard  of 
aspiration.  And  it  is  difficult  to  explain 
exactly  what  it  is  that  she  is  to  do.  If 
she  asks  if  she  is  expected  to  be  a  model 
woman,  the  reply  must  be  that  the  world 
does  not  much  hanker  after  what  is  called 
the  "  model  woman."  It  seems  to  be 
more  a  matter  of  tendency  than  anything 
else.  Is  she  sagging  towards  Realism  or 
rising  towards  Idealism?  Is  she  content 
to  be  the  woman  that  some  of  the  nov- 
elists, and  some  of  the  painters  also,  say 
she  is,  or  would  she  prefer  to  approach 
that  ideal  which  all  the  world  loves  ?  It 
is  a  question  of  standards. 

It  is  natural  that  in  these  days,  when 
the  approved  gospel  is  that  it  is  better  to 
be   dead   than   not  to   be    Real,  society 


should  try  to  approach  nature  by  the 
way  of  the  materialistically  ignoble,  and 
even  go  such  a  pace  of  Realism  as  liter- 
ature finds  it  difficult  to  keep  up  with; 
but  it  is  doubtful  if  the  young  woman 
will  get  around  to  any  desirable  state  of 
nature  by  this  route.  We  may  not  be 
able  to  explain  why  servile  imitation  of 
nature  degrades  art  and  degrades  woman, 
but  both  deteriorate  without  an  ideal  so 
high  that  there  is  no  earthly  model  for  it. 

Would  you  like  to  marry,  perhaps,  a 
Greek  statue  ?  says  the  justly  contempt- 
uous critic. 

Not  at  all,  at  least  not  a  Roman  copy 
of  one.  But  it  would  be  better  to  marry 
a  woman  who  would  rather  be  like  a 
Greek  statue  than  like  some  of  these 
figures,  without  even  an  idea  for  clothing, 
which  are  lying  about  on  green  banks  in 
our  spring  exhibitions. 


THE    ART    OF    IDLENESS 

Idleness  seems  to  be  the  last  accom- 
plishment of  civilization.  To  be  idle  grace- 
fully and  contentedly  and  picturesquely  is 
an  art.  It  is  one  in  which  the  Americans, 
who  do  so  many  things  well,  do  not  excel. 
They  have  made  the  excuse  that  they  have 
not  time,  or,  if  they  have  leisure,  that  their 
temperament  and  nervous  organization  do 
not  permit  it.  This  excuse  will  pass  for  a 
while,  for  we  are  a  new  people,  and  prob- 
ably we  are  more  highly  and  sensitively 
organized  than  any  other  nation— at  least 
the  physiologists  say  so ;  but  the  excuse 
seems  more  and  more  inadequate  as  we 
accumulate  wealth,  and  consequently  have 
leisure.  We  shall  not  criticise  the  Amer- 
ican colonies  in  Paris  and  Rome  and  Flor- 
ence,and  in  other  Continental  places  where 
they  congregate.  They  know  whether 
they  are  restless  or  contented,  and  what 
examples  they  set  to  the  peoples  who  get 


their  ideas  of  republican  simplicity  and 
virtue  from  the  Americans  who  sojourn 
among  them.  They  know  whether  with 
all  their  leisure  they  get  placidity  of  mind 
and  the  real  rest  which  the  older  nations 
have  learned  to  enjoy.  It  may  not  be  the 
most  desirable  thing  for  a  human  being 
to  be  idle,  but  if  he  will  be,  he  should  be 
so  in  a  creditable  manner,  and  with  some 
enjoyment  to  himself.  It  is  no  slander  to 
say  that  we  in  America  have  not  yet  found 
out  the  secret  of  this.  Perhaps  we  shall 
not  until  our  energies  are  spent  and  we 
are  in  a  state  of  decay.  At  present  we 
put  as  much  energy  into  our  pleasure  as 
into  our  work,  for  it  is  inbred  in  us  that 
laziness  is  a  sin.  This  is  the  Puritan 
idea,  and  it  must  be  said  for  it  that  in  our 
experience  virtue  and  idleness  are  not 
commonly  companions.  But  this  does 
not  go  to  the  bottom  of  the  matter. 

The  Italians  are  industrious;  they  are 
compelled  to  be  in  order  to  pay  their  taxes 
for  the  army  and  navy  and  get  macaroni 
enough  to  live  on.  But  see  what  a  long 
civilization  has  done  for  them.  They 
have  the  manner  of  laziness,  they  have 


'36 


the  air  of  leisure,  they  have  worn  off  the 
angular  corners  of  existence,  and  uncon- 
sciously their  life  is  picturesque  and  en- 
joyable. Those  among  them  who  have 
money  take  their  pleasure  simply  and 
with  the  least  expense  of  physical  energy. 
Those  who  have  not  money  do  the  same 
thing.  This  basis  of  existence  is  calm 
and  unexaggerated  ;  life  is  reckoned  by 
centimes,  not  by  dollars.  What  an  ideal 
place  is  Venice  !  It  is  not  only  the  most 
picturesque  city  in  the  world,  rich  in  all 
that  art  can  invent  to  please  the  eye,  but 
how  calm  it  is  !  The  vivacity  which  en- 
tertains the  traveller  is  all  on  the  surface. 
The  nobleman  in  his  palace — if  there  be 
any  palace  that  is  not  turned  into  a 
hotel,  or  a  magazine  of  curiosities,  or  a 
municipal  office — can  live  on  a  diet  that 
would  make  an  American  workman  strike, 
simply  because  he  has  learned  to  float 
through  life ;  and  the  laborer  is  equally 
happy  on  little  because  he  has  learned  to 
wait  without  much  labor.  The  gliding, 
easy  motion  of  the  gondola  expresses  the 
whole  situation  ;  and  the  gondolier  who 
with  consummate  skill  urges  his  dreamy 


bark  amid  the  throng  and  in  the  tortuous 
canals  for  an  hour  or  two,  and  then  sleeps 
in  the  sun,  is  a  type  of  that  rest  in  labor 
which  we  do  not  attain.  What  happiness 
there  is  in  a  dish  of  polenta,  or  of  a  few 
fried  fish,  in  a  cup  of  coffee,  and  in  one 
of  those  apologies  for  cigars  which  the 
government  furnishes,  dear  at  a  cent — 
the  cigar  with  a  straw  in  it,  as  if  it  were  a 
julep,  which  it  needs  five  minutes  to 
ignite,  and  then  will  furnish  occupation 
for  a  whole  evening !  Is  it  a  hard  lot, 
that  of  the  fishermen  and  the  mariners  of 
the  Adriatic  ?  The  lights  are  burning  all 
night  long  in  a  cafe  on  the  Riva  del  Schia- 
A^oni,  and  the  sailors  and  idlers  of  the 
shore  sit  there  jabbering  and  singing  and 
trying  their  voices  in  lusty  hallooing  till 
the  morning  light  begins  to  make  the 
lagoon  opalescent.  The  traveller  who 
lodges  near  cannot  sleep,  but  no  more 
can  the  sailors,  who  steal  away  in  the 
dawn,  wafted  by  painted  sails.  In  the 
heat  of  the  day,  when  the  fish  will  not 
bite,  comes  the  siesta.  Why  should  the 
royal  night  be  wasted  in  slumber  ?  The 
shore  of  the  Riva,  the  Grand  Canal,  the 


'38 


islands,  gleam  with  twinkling  lamps;  the 
dark  boats  glide  along  with  a  star  in  the 
prow, bearing  youth  and  beauty  and  sin  and 
ugliness,  all  alike  softened  by  the  shadows; 
the  electric  lights  from  the  shores  and  the 
huge  steamers  shoot  gleams  on  towers 
and  fac^ades  ;  the  moon  wades  among  the 
fleecy  clouds  ;  here  and  there  a  barge 
with  colored  globes  of  light  carries  a 
band  of  singing  men  and  women  and 
players  on  the  mandolin  and  the  fiddle, 
and  from  every  side  the  songs  of  Italy, 
pathetic  in  their  worn  gayety,  float  to  the 
entranced  ears  of  those  who  lean  from 
balconies,  or  lounge  in  gondolas  and  listen 
with  hearts  made  a  little  heavy  and  wist- 
ful with  so  much  beauty. 

Can  any  one  float  in  such  scenes  and 
be  so  contentedly  idle  anywhere  in  our 
happy  land  ?  Have  we  learned  yet  the 
simple  art  of  easy  enjoyment  ?  Can  we 
buy  it  with  money  quickly,  or  is  it  a  grace 
that  comes  only  with  long  civilization  ? 
Italy,  for  instance,  is  full  of  accumulated 
wealth,  of  art,  even  of  ostentation  and 
display,  and  the  new  generation  probably 
have  lost  the  power  to  conceive,  if  not 


the  skill  to  execute,  the  great  works  which 
excite  our  admiration.     Nothing  can  be 
much  more  meretricious  than  its  modern 
art,  when  anything  is  produced  that  is 
not  an  exact  copy  of  something  created 
when  there  was  genius   there.     But   in 
one  respect  the  Italians  have  entered  into 
the  fruits  of  the  ages  of  trial  and  of  fail- 
ure, and  that  is  the  capacity  of  being  idle 
with  much  money  or  with  none,  and  get- 
ting day  by  day  their  pay  for  the  bother 
of  living  in  this  world.     It  seems  a  diffi- 
cult lesson  for  us  to  learn  in  country  or 
city.    Alas !  when  we  have  learned  it  shall 
we  not  want  to  emigrate,  as  so  many  of  the 
Italians  do  ?     Some  philosophers  say  that 
men  were  not  created  to  be  happy.    Per- 
haps they  were  not  intended  to  be  idle. 


THERE  ANY  CONVERSATION' 

S  there  any  such  thing  as  conversa- 
tion? It  is  a  delicate  subject  to  touch, 
because  many  people  understand  conver- 
sation to  be  talk  ;  not  the  exchange  of 
ideas,  but  of  words  ;  and  we  would  not 
like  to  say  anything  to  increase  the 
flow  of  the  latter.  We  read  of  times 
and  salons  in  which  real  conversation 
existed,  held  by  men  and  women.  Are 
they  altogether  in  the  past  ?  We  believe 
that  men  do  sometimes  converse.  Do 
women  ever?  Perhaps  so.  In  those 
hours  sacred  to  the  relaxation  of  undress 
and  the  back  hair,  in  the  upper  pene- 
tralia of  the  household,  where  two  or 
three  or  six  are  gathered  together  on 
and  about  the  cushioned  frame  in- 
tended for  repose,  do  they  converse, 
or  indulge  in  that  sort  of  chat  from 
which  not  one  idea  is  carried  away  ? 
No    one    reports,    fortunately,   and    we 


do  not  know.  But  do  all  the  wom- 
en like  this  method  of  spending  hour 
after  hour,  day  after  day  —  indeed,  a  life- 
time ?  Is  it  invigorating,  even  restful  ? 
Think  of  the  talk  this  past  summer,  the 
rivers  and  oceans  of  it,  on  piazzas  and 
galleries  in  the  warm  evenings  or  the 
fresher  mornings,  in  private  houses,  on 
hotel  verandas,  in  the  shade  of  thou- 
sands of  cottages  by  the  sea  and  in  the 
hills  I  As  you  recall  it,  what  was  it  all 
about  ?  Was  the  mind  in  a  vapid  con- 
dition after  an  evening  of  it  ?  And  there 
is  so  much  to  read,  and  so  much  to  think 
about,  and  the  world  is  so  interesting,  if 
you  do  think  about  it,  and  nearly  every 
person  has  some  peculiarity  of  mind  that 
would  be  worth  study  if  you  could  only 
get  at  it !  It  is  really,  we  repeat,  such  an 
interesting  world,  and  most  people  get 
so  little  out  of  it.  Now  there  is  the  con- 
versation of  hens,  when  the  hens  are  busy 
and  not  self-conscious ;  there  is  some- 
thing fascinating  about  it,  because  the 
imagination  may  invest  it  with  a  recon- 
dite and  spicy  meaning;  but  the  com- 
mon talk  of  people  !    We  infer  sometimes 


that  the  hens  are  not  saying  anything, 
because  they  do  not  read,  and  conse- 
quently their  minds  are  empty.  And 
perhaps  we  are  right.  As  to  conversa- 
tion, there  is  no  use  in  sending  the 
bucket  into  the  well  when  the  well  is 
dry — -it  only  makes  a  rattling  of  windlass 
and  chain. 

We  do  not  wish  to  be  understood  to  be 
an  enemy  of  the  light  traffic  of  human 
speech.  Deliv^er  us  from  the  didactic 
and  the  everlastingly  improving  style 
of  thing !  Conversation,  in  order  to 
be  good,  and  intellectually  inspiring, 
and  spiritually  restful,  need  not  al- 
ways be  serious.  It  must  be  alert  and 
intelligent,  and  mean  more  by  its  sug- 
gestions and  allusions  than  is  said. 
There  is  the  light  touch-and-go  play 
about  topics  more  or  less  profound  that 
is  as  agreeable  as  heat-lightning  in  a  sul- 
try evening.  Why  may  not  a  person  ex- 
press the  whims  and  vagaries  of  a  lambent 
mind  (if  he  can  get  a  lambent  mind) 
without  being  hauled  up  short  for  it,  and 
plunged  into  a  heated  dispute  ?  In  the 
freedom  of   real   conversation  the  mind 


throws  out  half-thoughts,  paradoxes,  for 
which  a  man  is  not  to  be  held  strictly 
responsible  to  the  very  roots  of  his  being, 
and  which  need  to  be  caught  up  and 
played  with  in  the  same  tentative  spirit. 
The  dispute  and  the  hot  argument  are 
usually  the  bane  of  conversation  and  the 
death  of  originality.  We  like  to  express 
a  notion,  a  fancy,  without  being  called 
upon  to  defend  it,  then  and  there,  in  all 
its  possible  consequences,  as  if  it  were  to 
be  an  article  in  a  creed  or  a  plank  in  a 
platform.  Must  we  be  always  either 
vapid  or  serious  .-' 

We  have  been  obliged  to  take  notice 
of  the  extraordinary  tendency  of  Amer- 
ican women  to  cultivation,  to  the  im- 
provement of  the  mind,  by  means  of 
reading,  clubs,  and  other  intellectual  ex- 
ercises, and  to  acknowledge  that  they  are 
leaving  the  men  behind  ;  that  is,  the  men 
not  in  the  so-called  professions.  Is  this 
intellectualization  beginning  to  show  in 
the  conversation  of  women  when  they 
are  together,  say  in  the  hours  of  relax- 
ation in  the  penetralia  spoken  of,  or 
in    general   society  ?    Is  there   less  talk 


about  the  fashion  of  dress,  and  the  dear- 
ness  or  cheapness  of  materials,  and  about 
servants,  and  the  ways  of  the  inchoate 
citizen  called  the  baby,  and  the  infinitely 
little  details  of  the  private  life  of  other 
people  ?  Is  it  true  that  if  a  group  of  men 
are  talking,  say  about  politics,  or  ro- 
bust business,  or  literature,  and  they 
are  joined  by  women  (whose  company 
is  always  welcome),  the  conversation  is 
pretty  sure  to  take  a  lower  mental  plane, 
to  become  more  personal,  more  frivolous, 
accommodating  itself  to  quite  a  different 
range?  Do  the  well-read,  thoughtful 
women,  however  beautiful  and  brilliant 
and  capable  of  the  gayest  persiflage,  prefer 
to  talk  with  men,  to  listen  to  the  conver- 
sation of  men,  rather  than  to  converse 
with  or  listen  to  their  own  sex  ?  If  this 
is  true,  why  is  it  ?  Women,  as  a  rule,  in 
"  society  "  at  any  rate,  have  more  leisure 
than  men.  In  the  facilities  and  felicities 
of  speech  they  commonly  excel  men,  and 
usually  they  have  more  of  that  vivacious 
dramatic  power  which  is  called  "  setting 
out  a  thing  to  the  life."  With  all  these 
advantages,  and  all  the  wOrld   open   to 


tlicin  in  newspapers  and  in  books,  they 
ought  to  be  the  leaders  and  stimulators 
of  the  best  conversation.  With  them  it 
should  never  drop  down  to  the  too-com- 
mon flatness  and  banality.  Women  have 
made  this  world  one  of  the  most  beau- 
tiful places  of  residence  to  be  conceived. 
They  might  make  it  one  of  the  most 
interesting. 


THE   TALL   GIRL 

It  is  the  fashion  for  girls  to  be  tall. 
This  is  much  more  than  saying  that  tall 
girls  are  the  fashion.  It  means  not  only 
that  the  tall  girl  has  come  in,  but  that 
girls  are  tall,  and  are  becoming  tall,  be- 
cause it  is  the  fashion,  and  because  there 
is  a  demand  for  that  sort  of  girl.  There 
is  no  hint  of  stoutness,  indeed  the  willowy 
pattern  is  preferred,  but  neither  is  lean- 
ness suggested  ;  the  women  of  the  period 
have  got  hold  of  the  poet's  idea,  "  tall 
and  most  divinely  fair,"  and  are  living  up 
to  it.  Perhaps  this  change  in  fashion  is 
more  noticeable  in  England  and  on  the 
Continent  than  in  America,  but  that  may 
be  because  there  is  less  room  for  change 
in  America,  our  girls  being  always  of  an 
aspiring  turn.  Very  marked  the  phenom- 
enon is  in  England  ,  on  the  street,  at  any 
concert  or  reception,  the  number  of  tall 
girls  is  so  large  as  to  occasion  remark. 


especially  among  the  young  g'i'ls  just 
coming  into  the  conspicuousness  of  wom- 
anhood. The  tendency  of  the  new  gen- 
eration is  towards  unusual  height  and 
gracious  slimncss.  The  situation  would 
be  embarrassing  to  thousands  of  men  who 
have  been  too  busy  to  think  about  growing 
upward,  were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  the 
tall  girl,  who  must  be  looked  up  to,  is  al- 
most invariably  benignant,  and  bears  her 
height  with  a  sweet  timidity  that  disarms 
fear.  Besides,  the  tall  girl  has  now  come 
on  in  such  force  that  confidence  is  infused 
into  the  growing  army,  and  there  is  a  sense 
of  support  in  this  survival  of  the  tallest 
that  is  very  encouraging  to  the  young. 

Many  theories  have  been  put  forward 
to  account  for  this  phenomenon.  It  is 
known  that  delicate  plants  in  dark  places 
struggle  up  towards  the  light  in  a  frail 
slenderness,  and  it  is  said  that  in  England, 
which  seems  to  have  increasing  cloud- 
iness, and  in  the  capital  more  and  more 
months  of  deeper  darkness  and  blackness, 
it  is  natural  that  the  British  girl  should 
grow  towards  the  light.  But  this  is  a 
fanciful  view  of  the  case,  for  it  cannot  be 


proved  that  English  men  have  propor- 
tionally increased  their  stature.  The  Eng- 
lish man  has  always  seemed  big  to  the 
Continental  peoples,  partly  because  ob- 
jects generally  take  on  gigantic  dimen- 
sions when  seen  through  a  fog.  Another 
theory,  which  has  much  more  to  com- 
mend it,  is  that  the  increased  height  of 
women  is  due  to  the  aesthetic  movement, 
which  has  now  spent  its  force,  but  has 
left  certain  results,  especially  in  the  change 
of  the  taste  in  colors.  The  woman  of  the 
aesthetic  artist  was  nearly  always  tall,  usu- 
ally willowy,  not  to  say  undulating  and 
serpentine.  These  forms  of  feminine  love- 
liness and  commanding  height  have  been 
for  many  years  before  the  eyes  of  the 
women  of  England  in  paintings  and  draw- 
ings, and  it  is  unavoidable  that  this  pat- 
tern should  not  have  its  effect  upon  the 
new  and  plastic  generation.  Never  has 
there  been  another  generation  so  open  to 
new  ideas ;  and  if  the  ideal  of  woman- 
hood held  up  was  that  of  length  and 
gracious  slenderness,  it  would  be  very 
odd  if  women  should  not  aspire  to  it. 
We  know  very  well  the  influence  that  the 


heroines  of  the  novelists  have  had  from 
time  to  time  upon  the  women  of  a  given 
period.  The  heroine  of  Scott  was,  no 
doubt,  once  common  in  society — the  del- 
icate creature  who  promptly  fainted  on 
the  reminiscence  of  the  scent  of  a  rose, 
but  could  stand  any  amount  of  dragging 
by  the  hair  through  underground  pas- 
sages, and  midnight  rides  on  lonely  moors 
behind  mailed  and  black-mantled  knights, 
and  a  run  or  two  of  hair-removing  typhoid 
fever,  and  come  out  at  the  end  of  the  story 
as  fresh  as  a  daisy.  She  could  not  be  found 
now,  so  changed  are  the  requirements  of 
fiction.  We  may  assume,  too,  that  the  full- 
blown aesthetic  girl  of  that  recent  period 
— the  girl  all  soul  and  faded  harmonies — 
would  be  hard  to  find,  but  the  fascination 
of  the  height  and  slenderness  of  that  girl 
remains  something  more  than  a  tradition, 
and  is,  no  doubt,  to  some  extent  copied  by 
the  maiden  just  coming  into  her  kingdom. 
Those  who  would  belittle  this  matter 
may  say  that  the  appearance  of  which  we 
speak  is  due  largely  to  the  fashion  of  dress 
— the  long  unbroken  lines  which  add  to 
the  height  and  encourage  the  appearance 


of  slenderness.  But  this  argument  gives 
away  the  case.  Why  do  women  wear  the 
present  fascinating  gowns,  in  which  the 
lithe  figure  is  suggested  in  all  its  womanly 
dignity?  In  order  that  they  may  appear 
to  be  tall.  That  is  to  say,  because  it  is 
the  fashion  to  be  tall ;  women  born  in  the 
mode  rtr^tall, and  those  caught  in  a  heredi- 
tary shortness  endeavor  to  conform  to  the 
stature  of  the  come  and  coming  woman. 

There  is  another  theory,  that  must  be 
put  forward  with  some  hesitation,  for  the 
so-called  emancipation  of  woman  is  a  del- 
icate subject  to  deal  with,  for  while  all 
the  sex  doubtless  feel  the  impulse  of  the 
new  time,  there  are  still  many  who  indig- 
nantly reject  the  implication  in  the  strug- 
gle for  the  rights  of  women.  To  say, 
therefore,  that  women  are  becoming  tall 
as  a  part  of  their  outfit  for  taking  the 
place  of  men  in  this  world  would  be  to 
many  an  affront,  so  that  this  theory  can 
only  be  suggested.  Yet  probably  physi- 
ology would  bear  us  out  in  saying  that 
the  truly  emancipated  woman,  taking  at 
last  the  place  in  aflfairs  which  men  have 
flown  in  the  face  of  Providence  by  deny- 


ing  her,  would  be  likely  to  expand  phys- 
ically  as  well  as  mentally,  and  that  as  she 
is  beginning  to  look  down  upon  man  in- 
tellectually, she  is  likely  to  have  a  corre- 
sponding physical  standard. 

Seriously,  however,  none  of  these  the- 
ories are  altogether  satisfactory,  and  we 
are  inclined  to  seek,  as  is  best  in  ail  cases, 
the  simplest  explanation.  Women  are 
tall  and  becoming  tall  simply  because  it 
is  the  fashion,  and  that  statement  never 
needs  nor  is  capable  of  any  explanation. 
A  while  ago  it  was  the  fashion  to  be  petite 
and  arch  ;  it  is  now  the  fashion  to  be  tall 
and  gracious,  and  nothing  more  can  be 
said  about  it.  Of  course  the  reader,  who 
is  usually  inclined  to  find  the  facetious 
side  of  any  grave  topic,  has  already 
thought  of  the  application  of  the  self- 
denying  hymn,  that  man  wants  but  little 
here  below,  and  wants  that  little  long ; 
but  this  maybe  only  a  passing  sigh  of  the 
period.  We  are  far  from  expressing  any 
preference  for  tall  women  over  short  wom- 
en. There  are  creative  moods  of  the 
fancy  when  each  seems  the  better.  We 
can  only  chronicle,  but  nev^er  create. 


THE 
DEADLY 
IsBJARY 


ANY  people  regard  the  keeping  of 
a  diary  as  a  meritorious  occupation.  The 
young  are  urged  to  take  up  this  cross  ;  it 
is  supposed  to  benefit  girls  especially. 
Whether  women  should  do  it  is  to  some 
minds  not  an  open  question,  although 
there  is  on  record  the  case  of  the  French- 
man who  tried  to  shoot  himself  when  he 
heard  that  his  wife  was  keeping  a  diary. 
This  intention  of  suicide  may  have  arisen 
from  the  fear  that  his  wife  was  keeping  a 
record  of  his  own  peccadilloes  rather  than 
of  her  own  thoughts  and  emotions.  Or 
it  may  have  been  from  the  fear  that  she 
was  putting  down  those  little  conjugal 
remarks  which  the  husband  always  dis- 
likes to  have  thrown  up  to  him,  and  which 
a  woman  can  usually  quote  accurately, 
it  may  be  for  years,  it  may  be  forever, 
without  the  help  of  a  diary.  So  we  can 
appreciate  without  approving  the  terror 


of  the  Frenchman  at  living  on  and  on  in 
the  same  house  with  a  growing  diary. 
For  it  is  not  simpl)'  that  this  Uttle  book 
of  judgment  is  there  in  black  and  white, 
but  that  the  maker  of  it  is  increasing  her 
power  of  minute  observ^ation  and  analyt- 
ic expression.  In  discussing  the  ques- 
tion whether  a  woman  should  keep  a 
diary  it  is  understood  that  it  is  not  a 
mere  memorandum  of  events  and  en- 
gagements, such  as  both  men  and  women 
of  business  and  affairs  necessarily  keep, 
but  the  daily  record  which  sets  down 
feelings,  emotions,  and  impressions,  and 
criticises  people  and  records  opinions. 
But  this  is  a  question  that  applies  to 
men  as  well  as  to  women. 

It  has  been  assumed  that  the  diar}^ 
serves  two  good  purposes  :  it  is  a  disci- 
plinary exercise  for  the  keeper  of  it,  and 
perhaps  a  moral  guide  ;  and  it  has  great 
historical  value.  As  to  the  first,  it  may 
be  helpful  to  order,  method,  discipline, 
and  it  may  be  an  indulgence  of  spleen, 
whims,  and  unwholesome  criticism  and 
conceit.  The  habit  of  saying  right  out 
what  you  think   of   everybody  is   not  a 


156 

good  one,  and  the  record  of  such  opin- 
ions and  impressions,  while  it  is  not  so 
mischievous  to  the  pubHc  as  tallcing  may 
be,  is  harmful  to  the  recorder.  And 
when  we  come  to  the  historical  value  of 
the  diary,  we  confess  to  a  growing  sus- 
picion of  it.  It  is  such  a  deadly  weapon 
when  it  comes  to  light  after  the  passage 
of  years.  It  has  an  authority  which  the 
spoken  words  of  its  keeper  never  had.  It 
is  ex  pa?-te,  and  it  cannot  be  cross-exam- 
ined. The  supposition  is  that  being  con- 
temporaneous with  the  events  spoken  of, 
it  must  be  true,  and  that  it  is  an  honest 
record.  Now,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  we 
doubt  if  people  are  any  more  honest  as  to 
themselves  or  others  in  a  diary  than  out 
of  it  ;  and  rumors,  reported  facts,  and 
impressions  set  down  daily  in  the  heat 
and  haste  of  the  prejudicial  hour  are 
about  as  likely  to  be  wrong  as  right. 
Two  diaries  of  the  same  events  rarely 
agree.  And  in  turning  over  an  old  diary 
we  never  know  what  to  allow  for  the 
personal  equation.  The  diary  is  greatly 
relied  on  by  the  writers  of  history,  but  it 
is  doubtful   if  there   is   any  such  liar  in 


the  world,  even  when  the  keeper  of  it  is 
honest.  It  is  certain  to  be  partisan,  and 
more  liable  to  be  misinformed  than  a 
newspaper,  which  exercises  some  care  in 
view  of  immediate  publicity.  The  writer 
happens  to  know  of  two  diaries  which 
record,  on  the  testimony  of  eye-witnesses, 
the  circumstances  of  the  last  hours  of 
Garfield,  and  they  differ  utterly  in  es- 
sential particulars.  One  of  these  may 
turn  up  fifty  years  from  now,  and 
be  accepted  as  true.  An  infinite  amount 
of  gossip  goes  into  diaries  about  men 
and  women  that  would  not  stand  the 
test  of  a  moment's  contemporary  pub- 
lication. But  by-and-by  it  may  all  be 
used  to  smirch  or  brighten  unjustly 
some  one's  character.  Suppose  a  man 
in  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  had  re- 
corded daily  all  his  opinions  of  men 
and  events.  Reading  it  over  now,  with 
more  light  and  a  juster  knowledge  of 
character  and  of  measures,  is  it  not  prob- 
able that  he  would  find  it  a  tissue  of 
misconceptions  ?  Few  things  are  act- 
ually what  they  seem  to-day ;  they  are 
colored  both  by  misapprehensions  and  by 


■58 


moods.  If  a  man  writes  a  letter  or  makes 
report  of  an  occurrence  for  immediate 
publication,  subject  to  universal  criticism, 
there  is  some  restraint  on  him.  In  his 
private  letter,  or  diary  especially,  he  is 
apt  to  set  down  what  comes  into  his 
head  at  the  moment,  often  without  much 
effort  at  verification. 

We  have  been  led  to  this  disquisition 
into  the  fundamental  nature  of  this  pri- 
vate record  by  the  question  put  to  us, 
whether  it  is  a  good  plan  for  a  woman  to 
keep  a  diary.  Speaking  generally,  the 
diary  has  become  a  sort  of  fetich,  the  au- 
thority of  which  ought  to  be  overthrown. 
It  is  fearful  to  think  how  our  characters 
are  probably  being  lied  away  by  innumer- 
able pen  scratches  in  secret  repositories, 
which  may  some  day  come  to  light  as 
unimpeachable  witnesses.  The  reader 
knows  that  he  is  not  the  sort  of  man 
which  the  diarist  jotted  him  down  to  be 
in  a  single  interview.  The  diary  may  be 
a  good  thing  for  self -education,  if  the 
keeper  could  insure  its  destruction.  The 
mental  habit  of  diarizing  may  have  some 
value,  even  when  it  sets  undue  impor- 


tance  upon  trifles.  We  confess  that,  never 
having  seen  a  woman's  private  diary  (ex- 
cept those  that  have  been  published),  we 
do  not  share  the  popular  impression  as  to 
their  tenuity  implied  in  the  question  put 
to  us.  Taking  it  for  granted  that  they 
are  full  of  noble  thoughts  and  beautiful 
imaginings,  we  doubt  whether  the  time 
spent  on  them  could  not  be  better  em- 
ployed in  acquiring  knowledge  or  taking 
exercise.  For  the  diary  forgotten  and 
left  to  the  next  generation  may  be  as 
dangerous  as  dynamite. 


THE   WHISTLING   GIRL 

The  wisdom  of  our  ancestors  packed 
away  in  proverbial  sayings  may  always  be 
a  little  suspected.  We  have  a  vague  re- 
spect for  a  popular  proverb,  as  embodying 
folk-experience,  and  expressing  not  the 
wit  of  one,  but  the  common  thought  of  a 
race.  We  accept  the  saying  unquestion- 
ing, as  a  sort  of  inspiration  out  of  the  air, 
true  because  nobody  has  challenged  it  for 
ages,  and  probably  for  the  same  reason 
that  we  try  to  see  the  new  moon  over 
our  left  shoulder.  Very  likely  the  musty 
saying  was  the  product  of  the  average 
ignorance  of  an  unenlightened  time,  and 
ought  not  to  have  the  respect  of  a  scien- 
tific and  travelled  people.  In  fact  it  will 
be  found  that  a  large  proportion  of  the 
proverbial  sayings  which  we  glibly  use  are 
fallacies  based  on  a  very  limited  expe- 
rience of  the  world,  and  probably  were 
set  afloat  by  the  idiocy  or  prejudice  of 


i63 


one  person.     To  examine  one    of   tlieni 
is  enough  for  our  present  purpose. 

"  Whistling  girls  and  crowing  hens 
Always  come  to  some  bad  ends." 

It  would  be  interesting  to  know  the 
origin  of  this  proverb,  because  it  is  still 
much  relied  on  as  evincing  a  deep  knowl- 
edge of  human  nature,  and  as  an  argument 
against  change,  that  is  to  sa3^  in  this  case, 
against  progress.  It  would  seem  to  have 
been  made  by  a  man,  conservative,  per- 
haps malevolent,  who  had  no  apprecia- 
tion of  a  hen,  and  a  conservatively  poor 
opinion  of  woman.  His  idea  was  to  keep 
woman  in  her  place— a  good  idea  when 
not  carried  too  far — but  he  did  not  know 
what  her  place  is,  and  he  wanted  to  put  a 
sort  of  restraint  upon  her  emancipation 
by  coupling  her  with  an  emancipated  hen. 
He  therefore  launched  this  shaft  of  ridi- 
cule, and  got  it  to  pass  as  an  arrow  of  wis- 
dom shot  out  of  a  popular  experience  in 
remote  ages. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  not  true,  and  prob- 
ably never  was  true  even  when  hens  were 
at  their  lowest.     We  doubt  its  Sanscrit 


164 


antiquity.  It  is  perhaps  of  Puritan  origin, 
and  rhymed  in  New  England.  It  is  false 
as  to  the  hen.  A  crowing  hen  was  always 
an  object  of  interest  and  distinction  ;  she 
was  pointed  out  to  visitors ;  the  owner 
was  proud  of  her  accomplishment,  and 
he  was  naturally  likely  to  preserve  her 
life,  especially  if  she  could  lay.  A  hen 
that  can  lay  and  crow  is  a  rara  avis. 
And  it  should  be  parenthetically  said  here 
that  the  hen  who  can  crow  and  cannot 
lay  is  not  a  good  example  for  woman. 
The  crowing  hen  was  of  more  value  than 
the  silent  hen,  provided  she  crowed  with 
discretion;  and  she  was  likely  to  be  a 
favorite,  and  not  at  all  to  come  to  some 
bad  end.  Except,  indeed,  where  the  prov- 
erb tended  to  work  its  own  fulfilment. 
And  this  is  the  regrettable  side  of  most 
proverbs  of  an  ill  -  nature,  that  they  do 
help  to  work  the  evil  they  predict.  Some 
foolish  boy,  who  had  heard  this  proverb, 
and  was  sent  oat  to  the  hen-coop  in  the 
evening  to  slay  for  the  Thanksgiving 
feast,  thought  he  was  a  justifiable  little 
providence  in  wringing  the  neck  of  the 
crowing  hen,  because  it  was  proper  (ac- 


i65 


cording  to  the  saying)  that  she  should 
come  to  some  bad  end.  And  as  years 
went  on,  and  that  kind  of  boy  increased 
and  got  to  be  a  man,  it  became  a  fixed 
idea  to  kill  the  amusing,  interesting, 
spirited,  emancipated  hen,  and  naturally 
the  barn-yard  became  tamer  and  tamer, 
the  production  of  crowing  hens  was  dis- 
couraged (the  wise  old  hens  laid  no  eggs 
with  a  crow  in  them,  according  to  the 
well-known  principle  of  heredity),  and  the 
man  who  had  in  his  youth  exterminated 
the  hen  of  progress  actually  went  about 
quoting  that  false  couplet  as  an  argument 
against  the  higher  education  of  woman. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  also,  the  couplet  is 
not  true  about  woman  ;  whether  it  ought 
to  be  true  is  an  ethical  question  that  will 
not  be  considered  here.  The  whistling 
girl  does  not  commonly  come  to  a  bad 
end.  Quite  as  often  as  any  other  girl 
she  learns  to  whistle  a  cradle  song,  low 
and  sweet  and  charming,  to  the  young 
voter  in  the  cradle.  She  is  a  girl  of 
spirit,  of  independence  of  character,  of 
dash  and  flavor  ;  and  as  to  lips,  why,  you 
must  have  some  sort  of  presentable  lips  to 


i66 


whistle;  thin  ones  will  not.  The  whistlinp; 
girl  does  not  come  to  a  bad  end  at  all  (if 
marriage  is  still  considered  a  good  occu- 
pation), except  a  cloud  may  be  thrown 
upon  her  exuberant  young  life  by  this 
rascally  proverb.  Even  if  she  walks  the 
lonely  road  of  life,  she  has  this  advantage, 
that  she  can  whistle  to  keep  her  courage 
up.  But  in  a  larger  sense,  one  that  this 
practical  age  can  understand,  it  is  not 
true  that  the  whistling  girl  comes  to  a 
bad  end.  Whistling  pays.  It  has  brought 
her  money;  it  has  blown  her  name  about 
the  listening  world.  Scarcely  has  a  non- 
whistling  woman  been  more  famous.  She 
has  set  aside  the  adage.  She  has  done  so 
much  towards  the  emancipation  of  her 
sex  from  the  prejudice  created  by  an  ill- 
natured  proverb  which  never  had  root  in 
fact. 

But  has  the  whistling  woman  come  to 
stay  ?  Is  it  well  for  woman  to  whistle  ? 
Are  the  majority  of  women  likely  to  be 
whistlers  ?  These  are  serious  questions, 
not  to  be  taken  up  in  a  light  manner  at 
the  end  of  a  grave  paper.  Will  woman 
ever  learn  to  throw  a  stone  ?    There  it  is. 


i67 


The  future  is  inscrutable.  We  only  know 
that  whereas  they  did  not  whistle  with 
approval,  now  they  do;  the  prejudice  of 
generations  gradually  melts  away.  And 
woman's  destiny  is  not  linked  with  that 
of  the  hen,  nor  to  be  controlled  by  a 
proverb— perhaps  not  by  anything. 


BORN   OLD   AND    RICH 

We  have  been  remiss  in  not  proposing 
a  remedy  for  our  present  social  and  eco- 
nomic condition.  Looking  backward,  we 
see  this.  The  scheme  may  not  be  prac- 
tical, any  more  than  the  Utopian  plans 
that  have  been  put  forward,  but  it  is  rad- 
ical and  interesting,  and  requires,  as  the 
other  schemes  do,  a  total  change  in  hu- 
man nature  (which  may  be  a  good  thing 
to  bring  about),  and  a  general  recasting 
of  the  conditions  of  life.  This  is  and 
should  be  no  objection  to  a  socialistic 
scheme.  Surface  m^easures  will  not  avail. 
The  suggestion  for  a  minor  alleviation  of 
inequality,  which  seems  to  have  been 
acted  on,  namely,  that  women  should  pro- 
pose, has  not  had  the  desired  effect  if  it 
is  true,  as  reported,  that  the  eligible  young 
men  are  taking  to  the  woods.  The  work- 
ings of  such  a  measure  are  as  impossible 
to  predict  in  advance  as  the  operation  of 


the  McKinley  tariff.  It  might  be  well  to 
legislate  that  people  should  be  born  equal 
(including  equal  privileges  of  the  sexes), 
but  the  practical  difficulty  is  to  keep  them 
equal.  Life  is  wrong  somehow.  Some 
are  born  rich  and  some  are  born  poor, 
and  this  inequality  makes  misery;  and 
then  some  lose  their  possessions,  which 
others  get  hold  of,  and  that  makes  more 
misery.  We  can  put  our  fingers  on  the 
two  great  evils  of  life  as  it  now  is :  the 
first  is  poverty;  and  the  second  is  infirm- 
ity, which  is  the  accompaniment  of  in- 
creasing years.  Poverty,  which  is  only 
the  unequal  distribution  of  things  desired, 
makes  strife,  and  is  the  opportunity  of 
lawyers ;  and  infirmity  is  the  excuse  for 
doctors.  Think  what  the  world  would  be 
without  lawyers  and  doctors  ! 

We  are  all  born  young,  and  most  of  us 
are  born  poor.  Youth  is  delightful,  but 
we  are  always  getting  away  from  it.  How 
different  it  would  be  if  we  were  always 
going  towards  it !  Poverty  is  unpleasant, 
and  the  great  struggle  of  life  is  to  get  rid 
of  it ;  but  it  is  the  common  fortune  that 
in  proportion  as  wealth   is  attained  the 


capacity  of  enjoying  it  departs.  It  seems, 
therefore,  that  our  life  is  wrong  end  first. 
The  remedy  suggested  is  that  men  should 
be  born  rich  and  old.  Instead  of  the  ne- 
cessity of  making  a  fortune,  which  is  of 
less  and  less  value  as  death  approaches, 
we  should  have  only  the  privilege  of 
spending  it,  and  it  would  have  its  natural 
end  in  the  cradle,  in  which  we  should  be 
rocked  into  eternal  sleep.  Born  old,  one 
would,  of  course,  inherit  experience,  so 
that  wealth  could  be  made  to  contribute 
to  happiness,  and  each  day,  instead  of 
lessening  the  natural  powers  and  increas- 
ing infirmities,  would  bring  new  vigor 
and  capacity  of  enjoyment.  It  would  be 
going  from  winter  to  autumn,  from  au- 
tumn to  summer,  from  summer  to  spring. 
The  joy  of  a  life  without  care  as  to  ways 
and  means,  and  every  morning  refitted 
with  the  pulsations  of  increasing  youth, 
it  is  almost  impossible  to  imagine. 

Of  course  this  scheme  has  difficulties 
on  the  face  of  it.  The  allotting  of  the 
measure  of  wealth  would  not  be  difficult 
to  the  socialists,  because  they  would  in- 
sist  that   every  person  should  be   born 


with  an  equal  amount  of  property.  What 
this  should  be  would  depend  upon  the 
length  of  life ;  and  how  should  this  be  ar- 
rived at?  The  insurance  companies  mif^ht 
agree,  but  no  one  else  would  admit  that 
he  belongs  in  the  average.  Naturally  the 
Biblical  limit  of  threescore  and  ten  sug- 
gests itself;  but  human  nature  is  very 
queer.  With  the  plain  fact  before  them 
that  the  average  life  of  man  is  less  than 
thirty-four  years,  few  would  be  willing,  if 
the  choice  were  offered,  to  compromise 
on  seventy.  Everybody  has  a  hope  of 
going  beyond  that,  so  that  if  seventy  were 
proposed  as  the  year  at  birth,  there  would 
no  doubt  be  as  much  dissatisfaction  as 
there  is  at  the  present  loose  arrange- 
ment. Science  would  step  in,  and  de- 
monstrate that  there  is  no  reason  why. 
with  proper  care  of  the  system,  it  should 
not  run  a  hundred  years.  It  is  improb- 
able, then,  that  the  majority  could  be  in- 
duced to  vote  for  the  limit  of  seventy 
years,  or  to  exchange  the  exciting  uncer- 
tainty of  adding  a  little  to  the  period 
which  must  be  accompanied  by  the 
weight  of  the  grasshopper,  for  the  cer- 


tainty  of  only  seventy  years  in  this  much- 
abused  world. 

But  suppose  a  limit  to  be  agreed  on, 
and  the  rich  old  man  and  the  rich  old 
woman  (never  now  too  old  to  marry)  to 
start  on  their  career  towards  youth  and 
poverty.  The  imagination  kindles  at  the 
idea.  The  money  would  hold  out  just  as 
long  as  life  lasted,  and  though  it  would 
all  be  going  downhill,  as  it  were,  what  a 
charming  descent,  without  struggle,  and 
with  only  the  lessening  infirmities  that 
belong  to  decreasing  age!  There  would 
be  no  second  childhood,  only  the  inno- 
cence and  elasticity  of  the  first.  It  all 
seems  very  fair,  but  we  must  not  forget 
that  this  is  a  mortal  world,  and  that  it  is 
liable  to  various  accidents.  Who,  for  in- 
stance, could  be  sure  that  he  would  grow 
young  gracefully  }  There  would  be  the 
constant  n,eed  of  fighting  the  hot  tempers 
and  impulses  of  youth,  growing  more  and 
more  instead  of  less  and  less  unreason- 
able. And  then,  how  many  would  reach 
youth  ?  More  than  half,  of  course,  would 
be  cut  off  in  their  prime,  and  be  more 
and  more  liable  to  go  as  they  fell  back 


into  the  pitfalls  and  errors  of  childhood. 
Would  people  grow  young  together  even 
as  harmoniously  as  they  grow  old  togeth- 
er? It  would  be  a  pretty  sight,  that  of 
the  few  who  descended  into  the  cradle 
together,  but  this  inversion  of  life  would 
not  escape  the  woes  of  mortality.  And 
there  are  other  considerations,  unless  it 
should  turn  out  that  a  universal  tax  on 
land  should  absolutely  change  human 
nature.  There  are  some  who  would  be 
as  idle  and  spendthrift  going  towards 
youth  as  they  now  are  going  away  from 
it,  and  perhaps  more,  so  that  half  the 
race  on  coming  to  immaturity  would  be 
in  child  asylums.  And  then  others  who 
would  be  stingy  and  greedy  and  avari- 
cious, and  not  properly  spend  their  al- 
lotted fortune.  And  we  should  have  the 
anomaly,  which  is  so  distasteful  to  the  re- 
former now,  of  rich  babies.  A  few  babies 
inordinately  rich,  and  the  rest  in  asylums. 
Still,  the  plan  has  more  to  recommend 
it  than  most  others  for  removing  proverty 
and  equalizing  conditions.  We  should 
all  start  rich,  and  the  dying  off  of  those 
v/ho  would  never  attain  youth  would  am- 


176 


ply  provide  fortunes  for  those  born  old. 
Crime  would  be  less  also  ;  for  while  there 
would,  doubtless,  be  some  old  sinners,  the 
criminal  class,  which  is  very  largely  under 
thirty,  would  be  much  smaller  than  it  is 
now.  Juvenile  depravity  would  propor- 
tionally disappear,  as  not  more  people 
would  reach  nonage  than  now  reach  over- 
age. And  thp  great  advantage  of  the 
scheme,  one  that  would  indeed  transform 
the  world,  is  that  women  would  always 
be  growing  younger. 


THE   "OLD    SOLDIER" 

The  "old  soldier"  is  beginning  to  out- 
line himself  upon  the  public  mind  as  a 
distant  character  in  American  life.  Lit- 
erature has  not  yet  got  hold  of  him,  and 
perhaps  his  evolution  is  not  far  enough 
advanced  to  make  him  as  serviceable  as 
the  soldier  of  the  Republic  and  the  Em- 
pire, the  relic  of  the  Old  Guard,  was  to 
Hugo  and  Balzac,  the  trooper  of  Italy  and 
Egypt,  the  maimed  hero  of  Borodino  and 
Waterloo,  who  expected  again  the  com- 
ing of  the  Little  Corporal.  It  takes  time 
to  develop  a  character,  and  to  throw  the 
glamour  of  romance  over  what  may  be 
essentially  commonplace.  A  quarter  of  a 
century  has  not  sufficed  to  separate  the 
great  body  of  the  surviving  volunteers  in 
the  war  for  the  Union  from  the  body  of 
American  citizens,  notwithstanding  the 
organization  of  the  Grand  Army  of  the 
Republic,  the  encampments,  the  annual 


178 


reunions,  and  the  distinction  of  pensions, 
and  the  segregation  in  Soldiers'  Homes. 
The  "old  soldier"  slowly  eliminates  him- 
self from  the  mass,  and  begins  to  take, 
and  to  make  us  take,  a  romantic  view  of 
his  career.  There  was  one  event  in  his 
life,  and  his  personality  in  it  looms  larger 
and  larger  as  he  recedes  from  it.  The 
heroic  sacrifice  of  it  does  not  diminish,  as 
it  should  not,  in  our  estimation,  and  he 
helps  us  to  keep  glowing  a  lively  sense  of 
it.  The  past  centres  about  him  and  his 
great  achievement,  and  the  whole  of  life 
is  seen  in  the  light  of  it.  In  his  retreat 
in  the  Home,  and  in  his  wandering  from 
one  Home  to  another,  he  ruminates  on 
it,  he  talks  of  it ;  he  separates  himself 
from  the  rest  of  mankind  by  a  broad  dis- 
tinction, and  his  point  of  view  of  life  be- 
comes as  original  as  it  is  interesting.  In 
the  Homes  the  battered  veterans  speak 
mainly  of  one  thing;  and  in  the  monot- 
ony of  their  spent  lives  develop  whim- 
seys  and  rights  and  wrongs,  patriotic  ar- 
dors and  criticisms  on  their  singular  fate, 
which  are  original  in  their  character  in 
our  society.     It  is  in  human  nature  to 


like  rest  but  not  restriction,  bounty  but 
not  charity,  and  the  tired  heroes  of  the 
war  grow  restless,  though  every  physical 
want  is  supplied.  They  have  a  fancy  that 
they  would  like  to  see  again  the  homes  of 
their  youth,  the  farm-house  in  the  hills, 
the  cottage  in  the  river  valley,  the  lone- 
some house  on  the  wide  prairie,  the  street 
that  ran  down  to  the  wharf  where  the 
fishing-smacks  lay,  to  see  again  the  friends 
whom  they  left  there,  and  perhaps  to  take 
up  the  occupations  that  were  laid  down 
when  they  seized  the  musket  in  1861. 
Alas  I  it  is  not  their  home  any  more  ;  the 
friends  are  no  longer  there ;  and  what 
chance  is  there  of  occupation  for  a  man 
who  is  now  feeble  in  body  and  who  has 
the  habit  of  campaigning?  This  genera- 
tion has  passed  on  to  other  things.  It 
looks  upon  the  hero  as  an  illustration  in 
the  story  of  the  war,  which  it  reads  like 
history.  The  veteran  starts  out  from  the 
shelter  of  the  Home.  One  evening,  to- 
wards sunset,  the  comfortable  citizen, 
taking  the  mild  air  on  his  piazza,  sees  an 
interesting  figure  approach.  Its  dress  is 
half  military,  half  that  of  the  wanderer 


whose  attention  to  his  personal  appear- 
ance is  only  spasmodic.  The  veteran 
gives  the  military  salute,  he  holds  him- 
self erect,  almost  too  erect,  and  his  speech 
is  voluble  and  florid.  It  is  a  delightful 
evening;  it  seems  to  be  a  good  growing- 
time;  the  country  looks  prosperous.  He 
is  sorry  to  be  any  trouble  or  interruption, 
but  the  fact  is — yes,  he  is  on  his  way  to 
his  old  home  in  Vermont ;  it  seems  like 
he  would  like  to  taste  some  home  cook- 
ing again,  and  sit  in  the  old  orchard,  and 
perhaps  lay  his  bones,  what  is  left  of 
them,  in  the  burying-ground  on  the  hill. 
He  pulls  out  his  well-worn  papers  as  he 
talks ;  there  is  the  honorable  discharge, 
the  permit  of  the  Home,  and  the  pension. 
Yes,  Uncle  Sam  is  generous ;  it  is  the 
most  generous  government  God  ev^er 
made,  and  he  would  willingly  fight  for  it 
again.  Thirty  dollars  a  month,  that  is 
what  he  has;  he  is  not  a  beggar;  he 
wants  for  nothing.  But  the  pension  is 
not  payable  till  the  end  of  the  month. 
It  is  entirely  his  own  obligation,  his  own 
fault;  he  can  fight,  but  he  cannot  lie,  and 
nobody  is  to  blame  but  himself;  but  last 


night  he  fell  in  with  some  old  comrades 

at  Southdown,  and,  well,  you  know  how 

it  is.     He  had  plenty  of  money  when  he 

left  the  Home,  and  he  is  not  asking  for 

anything  now,  but  if  he  had  a  few  dollars 

for  his  railroad  fare  to 

the  next  city,  he  could 

walk  the  rest  of  the  way. 

Wounded?     Well,  if    I 

stood  out  here  against 

the  light  you  could  just 

see  through  me.  that's 

all.     Bullets.?     It's    no 

use   to  try  to   get  'em 

out.     But,  sir,  I'm  not 

complaining.    It  had  to 

be   done;    the  country 

had  to  be  saved ;   and 

I'd  do  it  again  if  it  were 

necessary.   Had  any  hot 

fights.-^    Sir,  I  was  at  Get-  '' 

tysburg !     The   veteran    straightens    up, 

and  his  eyes  flash  as  if  he  saw  again  that 

sanguinary  field.     Off  goes  the  citizen's 

hat.     Children,  come  out  here;    here  is 

one  of  the  soldiers  of  Gettysburg!     Yes, 

sir;  and  this  knee — you  see  I  can't  bend 


it  much— got  stiffened  at  Chickamauga; 
and  this  scratch  here  in  the  neck  was 
from  a  bullet  at  Gaines  Mill;  and  this 
here,  sir — thumping  his  chest— you  notice 
I  don't  dare  to  cough  much— after  the 
explosion  of  a  shell  at  Petersburg  1  found 
myself  lying  on  my  back,  and  the  only 
one  of  my  squad  who  was  not  killed  out- 
right. Was  it  the  imagination  of  the 
citizen  or  of  the  soldier  that  gave  the 
impression  that  the  hero  had  been  in  the 
forefront  of  every  important  action  of 
the  war  ?  Well,  it  doesn't  matter  much. 
The  citizen  was  sitting  there  under  his 
own  vine,  the  comfortable  citizen  of  a 
free  republic,  because  of  the  wounds  in 
this  cheerful  and  imaginative  old  wan- 
derer. There,  that  is  enough,  sir,  quite 
enough.  I  am  no  beggar.  I  thought  per- 
haps you  had  heard  of  the  Ninth  Ver- 
mont. Woods  is  my  name  — Sergeant 
Woods.  I  trust  sometime,  sir,  I  shall  be 
in  a  position  to  return  the  compliment. 
Good-evening,  sir;  God  bless  your  honor! 
and  accept  the  blessing  of  an  old  soldier. 
And  the  dear  old  hero  goes  down  the 
darkening  avenue,  not  so  steady  of  bear- 


i«3 


ing  as  when  he  withstood  the  charge  of 
Pickett  on  Cemetery  Hill,  and  with  the 
independence  of  the  American  citizen  who 
deserves  well  of  his  country,  makes  his 
way  to  the  nearest  hospitable  tavern. 


THE    ISLAND    OF    BIMINI 


|0  the  northward  of 
Hispaniola  Hes  the 
island  of  Bimini. 
It  may  not  be  one 
of  the  spice  is- 
lands, but  it  grows 
the  best  ginger  to 
be  found  in  the 
world.  In  it  is  a 
fair  city,  and  be- 
side the  city  a  lofty 
mountain,  at  the 
foot  of  which  is  a  noble  spring  called  the 
Pons  Jiivcntiiiis.  This  fountain  has  a 
sweet  savor,  as  of  all  manner  of  spicery, 
and  every  hour  of  the  day  the  water 
changes  its  savor  and  its  smell.  Who- 
ever drinks  of  this  well  will  be  healed  of 
whatever  malady  he  has,  and  will  seem 
always  young.  It  is  not  reported  that 
women  and  men  who  drink  of  this  fount- 


iS5 


ain  will  be  always  young,  but  that  they 
will  seem  so,  and  probably  to  themselves, 
which  simply  means,  in  our  modern  ac- 
curacy of  language,  that  they  will  feel 
young.  This  island  has  never  been  found. 
Many  voyages  have  been  made  in  search 
of  it  in  ships  and  in  the  imagination,  and 
Liars  have  said  they  have  landed  on  it 
and  drunk  of  the  water,  but  they  never 
could  guide  any  one  else  thither.  In  the 
credulous  centuries  when  these  voyages 
were  made,  other  islands  were  discovered, 
and  a  continent  much  more  important 
than  Bimini;  but  these  discoveries  were 
a  disappointment,  because  they  were  not 
what  the  adventurers  wanted.  They  did 
not  understand  that  they  had  found  a 
new  land  in  which  the  world  should  renew 
its  youth  and  begin  a  new  career.  In 
time  the  quest  was  given  up,  and  men  re- 
garded it  as  one  of  the  delusions  which 
came  to  an  end  in  the  sixteenth  century. 
In  our  day  no  one  has  tried  to  reach 
Bimini  except  Heine.  Our  scientific  pe- 
riod has  a  proper  contempt  for  all  such 
superstitions.  We  now  know  that  the 
Fons  Jiiventutis  is  in  every  man,  and  that 


if  actual  juvenility  cannot  be  renewed, 
the  advance  of  age  can  be  arrested  and 
the  waste  of  tissues  be  prevented,  and  an 
uncalculated  length  of  earthly  existence 
be  secured,  by  the  injection  of  some  sort 
of  fluid  into  the  system.  The  right  fluid 
has  not  yet  been  discovered  by  science, 
but  millions  of  people  thought  that  it  had 
the  other  day,  and  now  confidently  ex- 


pect it.  This  credulity  has  a  scientific 
basis,  and  has  no  relation  to  the  old  absurd 
belief  in  Bimini.  We  thank  goodness 
that  we  do  not  live  in  a  credulous  age. 

The  world  would  be  in  a  poor  case  in- 
deed if  it  had  not  always  before  it  some 
ideal  or  millennial  condition,  some  pana- 
cea, some  transmutation   of  base  metals 


into  gold,  some  philosopher's  stone,  some 
fountain  of  youth,  some  process  of  turn- 
ing charcoal  into  diamonds,  some  scheme 
for  eliminating  evil.  But  it  is  worth  men- 
tioning that  in  the  historical  evolution  we 
have  always  got  better  things  than  we 
sought  or  imagined,  developments  on  a 
much  grander  scale.  History  is  strewn 
with  the  wreck  of  popular  delusions,  but 
always  in  place  of  them  have  come  reali- 
zations more  astonishing  than  the  wildest 
fancies  of  the  dreamers.  Florida  was  a 
disappointment  as  a  Bimini,  so  were  the 
land  of  the  Ohio,  the  land  of  the  Missis- 
sippi, the  Dorado  of  the  Pacific  coast. 
But  as  the  illusions,  pushed  always  west- 
ward, vanished  in  the  light  of  common 
day,  lo  !  a  continent  gradually  emerged, 
with  millions  of  people  animated  by  con- 
quering ambition  of  progress  in  freedom; 
an  industrial  continent,  covered  with  a 
net-work  of  steel,  heated  by  steam,  and 
lighted  by  electricity.  What  a  spectacle 
of  youth  on  a  grand  scale  is  this  !  Chris- 
topher Columbus  had  not  the  slightest 
conception  of  what  he  was  doing  when 
he  touched  the  button.     But  we  are  not 


satisfied.  Quite  as  far  from  being  so  as 
ever.  The  popular  imagination  runs  a 
hard  race  with  any  possible  natural  de- 
velopment. Being  in  possession  of  so 
much,  we  now  expect  to  travel  in  the  air, 
to  read  news  in  the  sending  mind  before 
it  is  sent,  to  create  force  without  cost,  to 
be  transported  without  time,  and  to  make 
everybody  equal  in  fortune  and  happiness 
to  everybody  else  by  act  of  Congress. 
Such  confidence  have  we  in  the  power  of 
a  "  resolution  "  of  the  people  and  by  the 
people  that  it  seems  feasible  to  make  wom- 
en into  men,  oblivious  of  the  more  im- 
portant and  imperative  task  that  will  then 
arise  of  making  men  into  women.  Some 
of  these  expectations  are  only  Biminis  of 
the  present,  but  when  they  have  vanished 
there  will  be  a  social  and  industrial  world 
quite  beyond  our  present  conceptions,  no 
doubt.  In  the  article  of  woman,  for  in- 
stance, she  may  not  become  the  being 
that  the  convention  expects,  but  there 
may  appear  a  Woman  of  whom  all  the 
Aspasias  and  Helens  were  only  the  faintest 
types.  And  although  no  progress  will 
take  the  conceit  out  of  men,  there  may 


I  So 


appear  a  Man  so  amenable  to  ordinary 
reason  that  he  will  give  up  the  notion 
that  he  can  lift  himself  up  by  his  boot- 
straps, or  make 

one    grain    of  ,  . 

wheat   two   by 
calling  it  two. 

One  of  the 
Biminis  that 
have  always 
been  looked  for 
is  an  Ameri- 
can Literature. 
There  was  an 
impression  that 
there  must  be 
such  a  thing 
somewhere  on 
a  continent  that 
has  everything 
else.  We  gave 
the  world  to- 
bacco  and   the 

potato,  perhaps  the  most  important  con- 
tributions to  the  content  and  the  fatness 
of  the  world  made  by  any  new  country, 
and  it  was  a  noble  ambition  to  giv-e  it  new 


styles  of  art  and  literature  also.     There 
seems  to  have  been  an  impression  that  a 
literature  was  something  indigenous  or 
ready-made,  lil<e  any  other  purely  native 
product,  not  needing  any  special  period  of 
cultivation    or   development,  and   that  a 
nation  would  be  in  a  mortifying  position 
without  one,  even  before  it  staked  out  its 
cities  or  built  any  roads.     Captain  John 
Smith,  if  he  had   ever  settled   here  and 
spread  himself  over  the  continent,  as  he 
was  capable  of  doing,  might  have  taken 
the  contract  to  furnish  one,  and  we  may 
be  sure  that  he  would  have  left  us  noth- 
ing to  desire  in  that  direction.     But  the 
vein  of  romance  he  opened  was  not  fol- 
lowed up.   Other  prospectings  were  made. 
Holes,  so   to   speak,  were   dug  in    New 
England,  and  in  the  middle  South,  and 
along  the  frontier,  and  such  leads  were 
found  that  again  and  again  the  certainty 
arose  that  at  last  the  real  American  ore 
had  been  discovered.     Meantime  a  cer- 
tain process  called  civilization  went  on, 
and  certain  ideas  of  breadth  entered  into 
our   conceptions,  and    ideas   also  of  the 
historical  development  of  the  expression 


of  thought  in  the  world,  and  with  these  a 
comprehension  of  what  American  really 
is,  and  the  difficulty  of  putting  the  con- 
tents of  a  bushel  measure  into  a  pint  cup. 
So,  while  we  have  been  expecting  the 
American  Literature  to  come  out  from 


some  locality,  neat  and  clean,  like  a  nug- 
get, or,  to  change  the  figure,  to  bloom 
any  day  like  a  century-plant,  in  one  strik- 
ing, fragrant  expression  of  American  life, 
behold  something  else  has  been  preparing 
and  maturing,  larger  and  more  promising 
than  our  early  anticiptaions.     In  history, 


in  biography,  in  science,  in  the  essay,  in 
the   novel  and    story,  there   are  coming 
forth  a  hundred  expressions  of  the  hun- 
dred aspects  of  American  life;  and  they 
are  also  sung  by  the  poets  in  notes  as 
varied  as  the  migrating  birds.     The  birds 
perhaps  have  the  best  of  it  thus  far,  but 
the  bird   is  limited   to  a  small  range  of 
performances  while  he  shifts  his  singing- 
boughs  through  the  climates  of  the  con- 
tinent, whereas  the  poet,  though  a  little 
inclined  to  mistake  aspiration  for  inspira- 
tion, and  vagueness  of  longing  for  subtlety, 
is  experimenting  in  a  most  hopeful  man- 
ner.   And  all  these  writers,  while  perhaps 
not  consciously  American  or  consciously 
seeking  to  do  more  than  their  best   in 
their  several  ways,  are  animated   by  the 
free  spirit  of  inquiry  and  expression  that 
belongs  to  an  independent  nation,  and  so 
our  literature  is  coming  to  have  a  stamp 
of  its  own  that  is  unlike  any  other  na- 
tional stamp.    And  it  will  have  this  stamp 
more  authentically  and   be   clearer  and 
stronger  as  we  drop  the  self-conscious- 
ness of  the  necessity  of  being  American, 


ERE  is  June  again  !  It  never  was 
more  welcome  in  these  Northern  latitudes. 
It  seems  a  pity  that  such  a  month  cannot 
be  twice  as  long.  It  has  been  the  pet  of 
the  poets,  but  it  is  not  spoiled,  and  is  just 
as  full  of  enchantment  as  ever.  The  se- 
cret of  this  is  that  it  is  the  month  of  both 
hope  and  fruition.  It  is  the  girl  of  eigh- 
teen, standing  with  all  her  charms  on  the 
eve  of  womanhood,  in  the  dress  and  tem- 
perament of  spring.  And  the  beauty  of 
it  is  that  almost  every  woman  is  young, 
if  ever  she  were  young,  in  June.  For  her 
the  roses  bloom,  and  the  red  clover.  It 
is  a  pity  the  month  is  so  short.  It  is  as 
full  of  vigor  as  of  beauty.  The  energy  of 
the  year  is  not  yet  spent ;  indeed,  the 
world  is  opening  on  all  sides  ;  the  school- 
girl is  about  to  graduate  into  liberty ;  and 
the  young  man  is  panting  to  kick  or  row 
his  way  into  female  adoration  and  general 


notoriety.  The  young  men  have  made 
no  mistake  about  the  kind  of  education 
that  is  popular  with  women.  The  -^'ornen 
like  prowess  and  the  manly  virtues  of 
pluck  and  endurance.  The  world  has 
not  changed  in  this  respect.  It  was  so 
with  the  Greeks ;  it  was  so  when  youth 
rode  in  tournaments  and  unhorsed  each 
other  for  the  love  of  a  lady.  June  is  the 
knightly  month.  On  many  a  field  of 
gold  and  green  the  heroes  will  kick  their 
way  into  fame  ;  and  bands  of  young  wom- 
en, in  white,  with  their  diplorrias  in 
their  hands,  star-eyed  mathematicians  and 
linguists,  will  come  out  to  smile  upon  the 
victors  in  that  exhibition  of  strength  that 
women  most  admire.  No,  the  world  is 
not  decaying  or  losing  its  juvenility.  The 
motto  still  is,  "  Love,  and  may  the  best 
man  win !"  How  jocund  and  immortal 
is  woman !  Now,  in  a  hundred  schools 
and  colleges,  will  stand  up  the  solemn, 
well-intentioned  man  before  a  row  of 
pretty  girls,  and  tell  them  about  Woman- 
hood and  its  Duties,  and  they  will  listen 
just  as  shyly  as  if  they  were  getting  news, 
and  needed  to  be  instructed  by  a  man  on 


a  subject  which  has  engaged  tlieir  entire 
attention  since  they  were  five  years  old. 
In  the  light  of  science  and  experience  the 
conceit  of  men  is  something  curious. 
And  in  June  !  the  most  blossoming,  riant, 
feminine  time  of  the  year.  The  month 
itself  is  a  liberal  education  to  him  who  is 
not  insensible  to  beauty  and  the  strong 
sweet  promise  of  life.  The  streams  run 
clear  then,  as  they  do  not  in  April ;  the 
sky  is  high  and  transparent ;  the  world 
seems  so  large  and  fresh  and  inviting. 
Our  houses,  which  six  months  in  the 
year  in  these  latitudes  are  fortifications 
of  defence,  are  open  now,  and  the  breath 
of  life  flows  through  them.  Even  over 
the  city  the  sky  is  benign,  and  all  the 
country  is  a  heavenly  exhibition.  May 
was  sweet  and  capricious.  This  is  the 
maidenhood  deliciousness  of  the  year. 
If  you  were  to  bisect  the  heart  of  a  true 
poet,  you  would  find  written  therein 
June, 


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